


Bite Me

by Unda



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst, Angst and Porn, Bad Puns, Blood, Blood Drinking, M/M, Spiders, ZoSan - Freeform, if those tags makes a difference to you, sanzo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:49:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 126,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3846385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unda/pseuds/Unda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one ever said that pirates fight fair, but if someone bites you in a fight then it's perfectly reasonable to bite them back. Sanji has to learn that life isn't fair and nothing else is either but that bad jokes and falling in love certainly makes unlife worth living.  Zosan/Sanzo tw:blood and blood drinking</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The art for this chapter was done by the lovely and amazing BlackBarBooks

 

“YOU FUCKER!” Sanji yells as the pirate he’s fighting ducks inside the range of his kicks and sinks his teeth right into Sanji’s shoulder.

 

The pair of them grapple, falling to the floor and putting Sanji at a disadvantage. The guy is far bigger than Sanji is, closer to Franky's build with hugely broad shoulders and a mean looking face. Not that Sanji can really see his face from where the guy still has his teeth sunk into him. Sanji slams his knee into the guy's side but it doesn't make him let up, he's got Sanji's arms pinned and that's far too close to hurting his hands for Sanji's liking.

 

“See how you like it you bastard!” Sanji yells in the guy's ear over the sound of Franky shooting someone nearby. He opens his mouth and clamps his teeth down on the greasy haired guy's shoulder. He tightens his jaw as much as he can and then, in a sudden flood, the guy's skin kind of... pops as it rips open and blood floods Sanji's mouth all sick, thick and copper tasting. The guy yelps and wails, pushing back and clutching at his shoulder as he looks at Sanji in horror.

 

Sanji grins, it seems that this guy can dish it out but not take it. Well, that's too bad. Sanji grins a blood stained smile and drives his heel right up into the guy's jaw, sending him flying right off of the deck of the Sunny, over their opponent's ship and into the sea on the other side. Sanji wipes his chin off on the sleeve of his black jacket and scissor kicks himself back onto his feet and onto the face of the guy harassing Usopp.

 

Eventually the attacking pirates gather that the Strawhat crew outclasses them and decide to retreat before they lose any more members to the sea. They have a few people to fish out, assuming they've not drowned by now. Sanji counts at least four, the biter that he punted overboard, some electrocuted guys courtesy of Nami and one or maybe two who fell victim to Luffy's rubber menace. Of course Zoro got thrown overboard in that one too but he climbed back on so he doesn't count.

 

“You know, I'd like to go just one week without getting in a brawl Luffy.” Nami sighs, wringing water out of her hair. The pirates that they’d fought didn’t throw either of the girls overboard but they had decided to dunk Robin into the aquarium via the trap door in the deck, it was smart to figure out that it would neutralise her devil fruit power. It’d taken Nami out of the fight to rescue the archaeologist from drowning. Both were tactically smart moves but it was less smart to those kind of things around Sanji. He has absolutely zero regrets about breaking the man's jaw with that kick for hurting his beautiful ladies.

 

“The captain was hurting one of his nakama.” Luffy says, glaring at all of them. His voice is dangerously dark, the same way it was when he first saw the man being whipped on board the deck of the other pirate ship by their captain. Sanji doesn't have the heart to tell him that plenty of crews work that way, marine and pirate alike. Luffy wouldn't hear of such a thing in their crew, not at all, they're family.

 

Even though Sanji knows that it happens he's pretty sure that the vision of the red blood running freely down that boy's back is going to show up in his dreams. He was just a boy really, about fourteen or so, far too young for such things.

 

“I am not saying that we shouldn't have fought, Luffy. I'm merely saying that it would be nice to have a week or two of rest and relaxation now and then.” Nami sighs wistfully.

 

“A nice quiet beach, maybe. Being waited on hand and foot in the warm sunshine.” Nami says dreamily, her lashes fluttering shut. Sanji's heart thumps, he'd give anything to be the one waiting on her dainty hands and feet in that situation. He could rub suntan lotion into her back...

 

“Ow yeah, a little R and R. Kick back in the sun, oil up the guns and just chill.” Franky exclaims with a wide toothy grin.

 

“When you say oil up your guns do you mean your biceps or... or your actual guns in your arms?” Usopp asks curiously. That seems to stump Franky for a second, the cyborg blinking in confusion for a moment before declaring 'BOTH!' and laughing raucously. The rest of the crew start comparing vacation ideas, getting more and more extravagant with each addition.

 

“Oi cook, what happened to your face?” Zoro asks him quietly, tapping his own chin to demonstrate.

 

Sanji glances at their resident swordsman and notes the small crease of worry in between the moss-head's eyebrows. They don't do this after every fight, but ever since Thriller Bark whenever one of them looks more than a little worse for wear they check in like this, make sure the other is okay.

 

“It's not my blood. Some guy bit me so I bit him back, it got everywhere.” he grimaces, pulling the collar of his shirt away and seeing that they guy's blood is all over that too. Perhaps if he gets it in the wash soon enough he can save it but it's not likely. Another nice shirt in the bin, great.

 

“Do you know the kinds of things that you can catch from blood?” Chopper scolds him loudly. Zoro starts not so subtly laughing at Sanji’s misfortune.

 

“Oi shit face, I've seen you lick blood off of your swords, so don’t you look so smug!” He protests and indignantly points his finger at Zoro.

 

Chopper takes the bait and reels around to glare at Zoro angrily.

 

“You’re just as bad, both of you are idiots! Blood is one of the strongest vectors for disease transmission-” Chopper starts to lecture them both and Sanji promptly tunes out. Normally he’d at least listen for a little bit but his shoulder is starting to throb painfully. He figures now that the adrenaline is wearing off it's bound to start hurting again. Still, it feels like someone stabbed him. It feels fever hot too, he hopes he's not getting an infection, it would suck if Zoro was right.

 

“Oi, are you ok?” Zoro asks him again, looking more worried this time.

 

“Yeah marimo I'm-”

  
  
  


Sanji comes to with a sensation of falling. He tries to yelp but his lungs are empty of air. Before he can suck in a breath his back hits the water and he plunges below the surface. With no air in his body he starts sinking, and fast. Still fuzzy headed from being out of it he kicks in the water and breaches the surface, sucking in a huge breath as he does so.

 

He shakes his head, splattering water around him back into the sea as he treads water to stay afloat. What the hell happened? Did he faint? But if that was it then why is he overboard? Did Zoro or Chopper drop him on the way to the infirmary?

 

A ripple spreads through the water as something else hits the sea. Blearily Sanji looks over to see Zoro surface and desperately start swimming towards him. Zoro reaches him and crushes him to his side, his arms wrapped around Sanji's waist and his eyes filled with terror.

 

“Did you just drop me overboard?” Sanji croaks, his voice sore. God, he must have gotten salt in his eyes because they sting like a motherfucker. Without thinking he rubs them with the heels of his hands and instantly regrets it.

 

“Yeah.” Zoro says unevenly.

 

Sanji shakes his head, trying to put things back together. He was on deck after the fight and he and Zoro were bickering and bantering and then... falling. He must have passed out. He looks down and sees that he's not dressed the same as he was a moment ago, or however long it's really been. He'd been wearing an orange shirt and khakis, but now he's wearing a full tuxedo. What the hell?

 

“Why did you drop me overboard and why am I in my best suit? What the hell, marimo?” Sanji demands, looking at Zoro as they both kick to stay afloat. Zoro is still staring at him like he's got two heads or something. His eyes are so wide that his golden irises look teeny tiny in the whites of his eyes. His green hair is plastered to his head and Sanji can even feel the man shivering slightly. His mouth moves a few times before he speaks.

 

“You... We were burying you at sea. You... you were dead. You died three days ago.” Zoro says, his voice disconcertingly quiet and stunned.

 

“What?” He demands but Zoro doesn't offer anything else, just holds him and stares at him.

 

“That's a bad joke.” Sanji eventually says, pushing away from Zoro and swimming to the side of the ship as the others throw a rope over for them.

 

“It really is.” Zoro mutters and follows him.

 

The two of them climb up the rope, Sanji in the lead. Not that they have to climb far because Franky just hauls the fucking thing up so fast that Sanji nearly falls back overboard again. He stumbles as he lands on deck and Zoro hits the railing behind him and clambers up.

 

The crew are silent. They all stare at him, wide eyed and shocked. Sanji looks from one to the other. He starts with Franky who is... actually wearing clothes. He's wearing a suit in fact, a black one, all formal with a white shirt and flat black tie. Usopp and Luffy are dressed the same and even Zoro behind him matches. The ladies are both wearing long black dresses and even Chopper is wearing a little black shirt and has his hat off. Brook too is wearing only black and white, looking far too serious.

 

His whole crew is missing their usual colour, instead presenting only a monochrome shade, a palette of grief he realises.

 

He's about to open his mouth and ask a question, any question, he has so many. But before he can say a word Luffy is crushing him into a hug like an anaconda's grip.

 

“SANJI! Don't ever do that again!” Luffy yells into Sanji's chest as he bursts into tears that are hard enough that they shake Sanji’s body too.

 

“I- I didn't- what happened?” He asks, confused.

 

“You were dead, you just... you keeled over and died. One moment Zoro was talking to you and the next-” Nami cuts herself off with a choked sob, her hands covering her mouth as she looks at him with wide unblinking eyes. It's almost as if she's afraid that if she looks away for just a second that he'll die and slip away from her again.

 

“You were dead, you weren't breathing, your heart had stopped, you went through rigor mortis. I don't understand how this is possible. He was definitely dead!” Chopper insists, staring up at him with eyes that beg to be wrong.

 

“Seeing as he's walking and talking I can only assume that he... got better? Perhaps it's something in the water here.” Robin theorises, looking overboard to see if anything down there could explain the mystery.

 

For his part Sanji just hangs in Luffy's crushing grip, his feet lifted off of the floor with the strength of it whilst Luffy bawls into his chest, utterly messing up his suit. He can't wrap his head around it. Dead? How could he have been dead? He doesn't remember being dead. He certainly doesn't feel dead. But you can't get better from being dead right? That's kind of the definition. Well, except for Brook but he's pretty much the exception to the rule, although he is actually dead himself still.

 

“Ah, excuse me Luffy-san, but if you could just put Sanji down for a moment. I'd like to look at him.” Brook's voice says from behind Sanji. Luffy's arms tighten for a moment but then the rubber arms coil back away from Sanji and the captain lets him go.

 

Numbly Sanji turns to face Brook. The skeleton regards him for a quiet moment and Sanji's eyes flick over to Zoro who is crouched on the railing of the ship a little to Brook's left. The swordsman is watching him hawkishly, like a puzzle he's trying to figure out. He's seen the expression on Zoro's face hundreds of times before, when he's working through a kata that's not going right, or trying to crack a new technique. Only now he's looking at Sanji with that same focus, trying to work out an answer. Sanji hopes that Zoro tells him it if he works it out.

 

“I'm afraid people don't really get better from death, I would know. I've seen enough dead people in my time... and of course I'm just bones myself, yo hohohoho!” Brook chuckles, though Sanji senses that the humour is a little forced.

 

Brook's finger bones touch Sanji's jaw and turn his face this way and that. The crew watches them in tense silence.

 

“Sanji is still dead.” Brook says softly.

 

“Don't be absurd, he's standing right there. He's been talking and- he's not dead. He was but he can't be now. I don't know how but... he's fine.” Nami insists from behind him.

 

“Well, I'd like Chopper to confirm but I don't think that his heart is beating, he still looks just as pale as he did earlier and since he spoke last he's not breathed once. He's dead.” Brook concludes.

 

Sanji blinks in confusion and focuses. He's... he's not breathing. He deliberately breathes in and out and then stops. He lets his lungs empty completely of air and just stops. His lungs don't burn, there's no reflex to inhale again, nothing. He breathes in again to speak.

 

“Oh.” Is all that he can manage to say.

 

“Let me.” Is all the warning that Sanji gets from Chopper before a cold stethoscope is pressed to his back.

 

“Oi! You couldn’t have made that any colder Chopper?!” Sanji snaps, jolting reflexively away from the cold metal before grumbling and moving back. He settles in place as Chopper moves the device around Sanji’s back, asking him to breathe in and out, to hold his breath and so one. After a little while Chopper puffs his cheeks out with a sigh and drops the stethoscope around his own neck and frowns unhappily.

 

“You're right Brook, his heart isn't beating. Not at all.” Chopper says seriously. Sanji turns around to look at the worried little doctor who has resumed desperately pressing his stethoscope to Sanji's chest at the front, then to his neck and his arm as if Sanji's heart might have migrated somewhere else in the last five seconds.

 

“So he's what... a zombie?” Usopp asks, taking a timid step back.

 

“I don't... I remember having my shadow stolen but I wasn't dead. I don't remember what my shadow did when Moria cut it off of me so I don't remember what that felt like to compare it. But look, I feel fine.” Sanji insists, calmly prying Chopper from him.

 

“You're dead, that's not fine! That's the opposite of fine!” Chopper wails, trying to press his stethoscope against Sanji again as Sanji holds him off with a foot.

 

“He seems fine to me. Look.” Zoro says, pulling Wado free of his belt and prods him with her in her sheath. The end of the white case pokes Sanji in the ribs until he swats it away with a scowl.

 

“He is not FINE.” The doctor argues back.

 

“Sanji, are you still going to look for All Blue?” Luffy asks him suddenly. Sanji looks over at his captain, his eyes are serious and his hat is low over his eyes.

 

“Of course I am, it's my dream.” He responds, the answer obvious.

 

“Are you still our nakama?” Luffy presses again.

 

“Absolutely.” Sanji agrees.

 

“Then he's fine.” Luffy declares happily. He folds his arms and nods as if the whole matter is solved. His face melts back into it's usual happy go lucky expression, almost as if his deadly serious aura hadn't been there just moments before.

 

“He's not fine he's dead! Why is no one taking this seriously?!” The little reindeer wails miserably.

 

“We are Chopper, we are.” Robin says soothingly, crouching down and wrapping her arms around the blue nosed reindeer who cuddles into her chest with weepy eyes.

 

“But we wished for him back and here he is, besides, I'm not sure there's a lot that you can do to heal a man who's dead.” Robin continues thoughtfully, her blue eyes watching Sanji with unguarded curiosity.

 

“And being dead doesn't mean that you're not ok, YOHOHOHOHOHOHO!” Brook trills with laughter and slaps Sanji on the back.

 

“Come on Sanji, let's have lunch, it's been three days since I've eaten your food. You've been laying down on the job!” Luffy laughs, bounding to the kitchen.

 

A few other members of the crew migrate vaguely towards the kitchen, probably just for somewhere to go and to feel like they're doing something. Usopp looks like he's in shock, though Brook looks perfectly fine with everything.

 

“Good to have you back Sanji.” Franky says quietly, patting him on the back a little too hard before walking off.

 

Nami stands before Sanji, her eyes tearful. Before Sanji can say anything to her she flings herself at him, her arms around his neck and her face buried in the crook of his neck. Sanji winces, his shoulder hurts.

 

“You're so cold.” Nami shudders in his arms, her delicate form trembling.

 

“You're so warm.” Is all that Sanji can echo back to her.

 

“Please don't ever leave me like that again Sanji, I couldn't... I don't ever want to feel like that again.” She says quietly, her face pressed into his shirt with her dainty hands fisted in the lapels of his tuxedo jacket.

 

“I'm so sorry, I never intended to do this to you my princess.” He apologises, the guilt overwhelming him.

 

Nami pulls back and gives him a watery smile, rubbing her tears away with a finger.

 

“I'll forgive you this once Sanji.” She sniffles and smiles. She turns and walks off, leaving him and Zoro alone.

 

Sanji looks at the swordsman warily. He's tucked Wado back into his belt and is still crouched on the railing of the ship like some big dangerous creature.

 

“What’re you staring at asshole? I’m perfectly ok.” Sanji barks defensively.

 

“You were halfway through telling me that you were ok and then you died.” Zoro says flatly. He's not accusing as such but Sanji still feels guilty.

 

“I'm... sorry.” Sanji apologises through slightly gritted teeth. It’s a pretty weak apology as apologies go. It’s not something either of them really do to each other but dying on Zoro and leaving a ship full of grieving nakama might be enough to warrant it. Everyone has clearly been so worried for him, his gut churns guilty at the thought of it.

 

“Don't ever do that shit again. You didn't have to watch what it did to us, losing you... we can't do that again. None of us can.” Zoro says grimly.

 

For a selfish moment Sanji is glad that he hadn’t been alive to see it. He can imagine it all too well though, the tears, the shock, the disbelief. He'd be devastated if any member of the crew died and he put them all through that. But what killed him in the first place though? He thinks he has an idea.

 

He undoes his bow tie, stuffing it in his pocket and quickly undoes the top buttons to his shirt. He pulls it aside until he reaches the spot that throbbed earlier when Nami hugged him close. Sanji twists his neck to try to look at his own shoulder. He can just see the bite, jagged and cut into his pale skin. God, he's so incredibly pale. He's always been on the fair side but now he looks, well, he looks like a corpse. The bite itself has black spidery lines radiating out from it, they look toxic.

 

“Chopper said that killed you, but he couldn't work out just how exactly.” Zoro fills him in. Sanji grits his teeth, this killed him alright, and if he ever sees that bitey fucker again he'll return the favour and kill him right back.

 

Sanji sighs and buttons his shirt up again. It's only when he does his jacket up and straightens himself out that he notices it. Inside his breast pocket, where his white pocket square would usually be on his tux, there's something altogether different there. A neatly folded square of fabric, a kind of green black that Sanji knows by heart.

 

“Zoro...” He starts, but Zoro is already moving.

 

The swordsman barrels into him and snatches the fabric from his chest and bounces out of Sanji's range as quick as lightning, but it's too slow, Sanji’s already seen it.

 

“That was your bandana.” Sanji states, it's not a question.

 

“Shut up.” Zoro says stiffly, his back to Sanji as he stuffs the fabric into his trouser pocket like it personally wronged him.

 

“You buried me with it in my pocket.” Sanji presses a little more.

 

“I said shut up.” Zoro snarls and, yes, Sanji can see Zoro's ears going red. He steps a little to the side to get a better view of the swordsman and he can see that the bridge of his nose and his cheeks are totally scarlet in embarrassment. Sanji grins, this is too good.

 

“Aw, marimo. That's so sweet.” He grins, enjoying the way that Zoro gives a full body flinch at the word. Despite the horrified look that Zoro’s wearing at having been told that, and it is hysterical, Sanji finds that he kind of… means it. He never sees this side of Zoro, though he knows full well that it's there. He knows that he's sweet with Chopper and even Usopp and Luffy now and then, but never him.

 

“It doesn't count, you were dead.” Zoro insists furiously, averting his eyes as much as he can with Sanji dancing around trying to get in front of him to make Zoro look at him.

 

“I think I should have it back, it was a gift right?” He teases, all but laughing his ass off.

 

“How about I gag you with it and throw you back overboard you curled bastard?” Zoro spits furiously and Sanji doubles up laughing.

 

“I'll think about it.” He says through a laugh after a moment or two of composing himself. He steers Zoro towards the kitchen.

  
“Come on, I've got to cook, I dread to think what happened to my kitchen whilst I was dead. Tell me you didn't let Luffy eat his way through his grief.” Sanji laughs aloud. 

The art for this chapter was done by the lovely and amazing BlackBarBooks


	2. Chapter 2

Above all else Sanji is surprised at how easy it is to be normal again. He's in the kitchen going through motions that he knows like the back of his hand. Checking the fridge to see what it's stocked with whilst he's been away, dead not away, chopping vegetables, his skin is so pale, cooking meat, he can hardly feel the heat. It's all so normal and so very much not.

 

Behind him his nakama seem to have split into two approaches, some are pretending like everything is perfectly 100% normal again. Sanji includes himself in this category, he's cooking after all, but there are others. Luffy, Brook and Franky are all joking around like normal, like they hadn't just been giving Sanji a burial at sea less than half an hour ago. Others are still watching Sanji like they think he might just suddenly start being truly dead again. Usopp in particular keeps watching Sanji uneasily, whether he’s unnerved at the reversal of Sanji’s fate or if he’s somewhat scared Sanji doesn’t know. When he looks at the sharpshooter directly though he acts bright and normal, nodding along with whatever the others are saying, it slips whenever Sanji’s attention to him drifts though, he can see it in the corner of his eye. Nami for her part is trying to smile and play along but Sanji can feel her sad worried eyes on him like a weight on his shoulders. Robin is staring at him like something to be studied and Chopper looks deeply confused and unhappy. Sanji thinks that he sees a note of guilt there too.

 

The only person not fitting this pattern is Zoro. Zoro isn't pretending like everything is okay, but nor is he watching Sanji like he thinks it's all going to go wrong. Zoro is staring at him though, or perhaps not staring at him, just watching. His eyes run over Sanji's body from head to toe, studying him, watching how he moves and how he behaves. He supposes that he shouldn't be surprised, Zoro is a fighter after all and analysing people is what he does. Sanji just doesn't want to think about whether Zoro is watching him to see that he's still working okay or whether he's watching him to figure out how to take him down if he has to.

 

For his part Sanji is trying to be normal. It's hard when every passing second flags up as wrong inside his brain. He's noticing everything Brook pointed out and more. He can breathe on command, he can still talk after all, but the moment he stops actively thinking about doing so then he stops doing it. His chest goes still and he just continues moving without breathing at all. Now that he's aware of it he can feel the lack of a heartbeat in himself, the subtle push pull in his veins and arteries, the whoosh of blood in his ears that usually everyone tunes out and becomes noticeable only in its absence.

 

There are other things too, his skin for example is cold to the touch and almost as white as his shirt sleeves. The beds of his nails are no longer pink but instead white with a tinge of blue under them. When he catches his reflection in the surface of the water he sees that his face is just as bad. He has dark circles under his eyes and his lips are ghostly pale.

 

He doesn't feel dead though. Or rather, lots of him feels normal. His hands fly over food and tools just as reliably as they always would, his coordination is as put together as always and his movements graceful. He's far from the shuffling dead on Thriller Bark or the monsters in movies and books. What is he though? Some kind of zombie? He was bitten after all, the proof of that still lurking under his shirt like a secret threat. Maybe it's nothing particularly supernatural at all. He promised himself and Zeff that he'd find All Blue and he promised that he'd stay with his crew and help them reach their dreams. Perhaps he had just decided that a little thing like dying wasn't going to stop him. Is he just being animated by sheer force of will?

 

Cooking is something of a comfort though and the recipe that he chose is one of the first that Zeff ever taught him, a simple vegetable soup. He doesn't need to think about it, taste it or even look at it. He could die and still know this recipe by heart. He should write Zeff a letter and tell him that.

 

When he sets the food down normality seems to pick back up for everyone, the familiar chaos of a Straw Hat crew meal time overriding the melancholy aura of his death. Several of their members have got changed back into regular clothes, Franky had been the first to slip out and looks much happier sat there in just his speedos and a hideous shirt. Usopp, Luffy and Zoro had all been banished by Nami to get back into their normal clothes before they ruined their nice suits, a good call Sanji feels. But the rest of the crew are still dressed for a funeral and the contrast rather unnerves Sanji.

 

He sets bowls down before everyone, serving the ladies first. He sets baskets of bread down with two sets of butter as well, that way people don't fight over them being at one end of the table and out of reach. He serves glasses of water to everyone and by the time he sits down in his own chair to eat several of the crew are halfway through their own bowls of soup. Luffy of course is already on his second, the uncultured peasant.

 

He doesn't feel hungry at all, but he supposes that he's not eaten for days so he really ought to eat something. He leans over his bowl of soup and feels the steam rising from it warm his cheeks, the smell of it is familiar in a warm and comforting way that makes him feel like he's back on the Baratie. The first mouthful is heaven, the essence of home in one sip. He sighs as it runs down his throat, the warmth radiating out through the warm trail it makes down his insides. He's aware that he's so cold, not that he feels uncomfortable or chilly, but he's more aware that everything else is warmer than him. Perhaps a good meal will warm him up. He eats a little more and feels the warmth of it sitting inside his stomach in a rather peculiar way, he's never been this aware of his food sitting inside of him like this before, not even when he was starving and got to eat. He supposes it's the temperature difference. The more he eats though the more discomfort that he feels. Eventually it feels like his stomach is tying in knots and Sanji has to put his spoon down. He feels sick.

 

His hands tremble as he grips the edge of the table lightly, just something to anchor him. Yet, though his grip feels light he can see the wood warping and denting around his fingers. A wave of thick nausea rolls through him and Sanji feels bile rise up his throat. He's going to be sick. Shit, he's not going to make it to the bathroom in time. He sprints out of the galley door and just makes it to the edge of the ship when his stomach feels like it turns inside out. He retches, spits and shudders as every last thing that he ate flings itself overboard, leaving him weak and trembling. He hates being sick and he almost never is, probably through sheer force of will.

 

He hears a creak of floorboards, the all too familiar thud of boots on deck. It's Zoro. Shit, he's dead and he's acting weird, Zoro is out here to keep an eye on him. To defend his crew. Hell, the last living corpses they came across tried to kill them, Zoro has to be thinking the same. He glances through his fringe, Zoro is holding something. Shit, he's going to stab him, or he's getting ready to.

 

He whirls around, mouth open to convince Zoro that he's fine, that he's no threat. The words die in his throat however when he sees that far from waving a sword at him in threat Zoro is standing there wielding a banana. Sanji giggles at the dissonance of his mind and the reality. Zoro arches an eyebrow at him and holds out the glass of water that he had in his other hand.

 

Sanji takes it, swirls the water around in his mouth and spits, improving the disgusting taste in his mouth immensely. He repeats that a few times before actually drinking any water. As soon as the liquid is in his stomach it churns threateningly but seems to settle down when Sanji doesn't drink any further.

 

“Ugh, that felt awful.” Sanji groans softly.

 

“I guess your system isn't what it was.” Zoro offers thoughtfully in a way that explains fuck all. Sanji shoots him a sarcastic 'no, really?' expression and rolls his eyes.

 

“Here, something a little easier on your stomach. You should still probably eat something.” the swordsman concludes and hands the banana to Sanji as he leans back on the railing at Sanji's side.

 

Sanji nods in agreement and holds the fruit with one hand whilst resting the other on his belly. When it feels a little less volatile he decides to try eating again. He peels the fruit, just ripe from when he picked them up at the market, still green a few days ago. Well, he supposes about a week ago now. Being dead really messes with your sense of time it seems.

 

His first bite of banana is barely into his stomach before Sanji has to turn around and violently throw it up again. Oh god, it feels like getting punched right in the solar plexus. It's worse than the first time and his stomach seems malicious, as if it's telling him to dare trying that again and see what it gets him. His body has turned against him.

 

“I guess you can't eat. Makes sense, dead people don't eat.” Zoro concludes between bites, having caught the banana that Sanji dropped as he turned around to hurl. One thing Sanji will give the swordsman is that he's got a strong stomach, not many people could watch someone hurl whilst casually eating themselves. Still, he grudgingly approves of Zoro not wasting food just because Sanji can't eat right now.

 

“Bullshit, Brook eats.” Sanji points out and spits overboard, trying to rid himself of the mixed taste of bile and banana. He needs to brush his teeth.

 

“Brook doesn't have to, he went fifty years without food.” Zoro points out and throws the peel overboard.

 

“...also Brook is fucking weird.” the swordsman adds.

 

Sanji has no argument for that.

 

“What is wrong with me?” Sanji wonders aloud as he forces himself to breathe in and out in an effort to dissipate the queasiness.

 

“You're dead.” Zoro answers bluntly. Sanji smacks him on the arm, insensitive bastard. Zoro smirks at him and Sanji relaxes slightly. Sanji turns his back on the sea and slides down to the floor, running his hands through his hair and letting his stomach settle again. Zoro sits by his side and joins him.

 

Neither of them say much. Sanji feels too sick to do so and Zoro has never been a sparkling conversationalist. He's just about feeling ok again when there's a hard pinch to his arm.

 

“Ow!” He exclaims, looking over at Zoro. The fucker pinched him!

 

“I can't believe that you're really back, I feel like I'm dreaming.” Zoro explains quietly, he looks distant and somewhat distrustful, like he's been given some gift that's too good and is expecting it to be snatched back at any second. Sanji's heart aches. It's not his fault but he's hurt his nakama so much, even Zoro.

 

“You're supposed to pinch yourself if you think you're dreaming, dumbass.” Sanji argues back.

 

“Why would I do that?” Zoro responds. Sanji grits his teeth and pinches Zoro hard enough to make him yelp. Seeing as they are both grown adults this absolutely does not descend into a slapping, shoving and pinching match. There are absolutely no witnesses to say otherwise.

 

“God, what am I?” Sanji asks, leaning his head back against the railing and shutting his eyes.

 

“You're our cook.” Zoro answers, getting up and walking back into the galley, probably trying to retrieve whatever might be left of his food that Luffy hasn't got to yet.

 

Damn simplistic and strangely reassuring swordsman. Sanji sits alone on the deck and feels sorry for himself. Eventually he gets up and starts off towards the bathroom. He locks himself in and grabs his toothbrush, grateful that no one threw it away whilst he was dead. He spreads toothpaste on the brush and shoves it in his mouth. He looks at himself in the mirror whilst he brushes. He looks oddly formal dressed like this but he finds himself touched that his nakama buried him in his nicest suit, it's a sweet gesture. His skin is ghostly pale though, he knew that from looking at his hands but seeing his reflection in the mirror makes it all the more real.

 

He switches to brushing the molars on the other side of his mouth and leans in to look at himself a little closer. His eyes have dark circles under them but his eyes themselves have changed colour. Instead of being their usual blue they've faded to a slate grey colour, he wonders if that happens to all dead people.

 

He spits his toothpaste out into the sink and opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out. He brushes it, scraping the vile taste out of his mouth, though it takes some effort. He spits again and moves to his front teeth. He undoes his buttons again and pulls the shirt aside to look at the bite. It's not so bad from a distance. The bite itself is a little red looking and the black veins that Sanji had seen spidering out from it are actually quite fine when you're not looking at them from an inch away. What the shit did that guy have that killed him?

 

A sharp pain shoots through Sanji's mouth and he pulls his toothbrush free to see it covered in blood, the bristles stained a dark red, so dark that it’s almost black in fact. He bends over and spits, toothpaste foam collecting in the sink in a red foamy mess. More alarming though is the skittering sound of something solid hitting the porcelain of the sink. Sanji's hand comes down on it before it goes down the drain and, with trembling fingers, he holds it up. It's a tooth. One of his teeth in fact. He stares at himself in the mirror and opens his mouth. It's his left canine. It's not where it should be in his mouth, instead there's just a gap there, the tooth is in his hand instead.

 

Panic claws up Sanji's insides and runs cold fingers down the back of his neck. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and bursts out of the bathroom.

 

“CHOPPER!” He yells as he runs and skids into the infirmary where the alarmed little doctor sits in his chair, notes spread out on his table.

 

“My tooth!” He shouts, holding it out for Chopper.

 

“Oh my, sit down.” Chopper says calmly, ushering the cook to the bed where Sanji collapses in shaky shock. Chopper changes form to one with fingers and Sanji drops the tooth into Chopper's furry palm. Chopper snaps latex gloves onto his hands, his mouth a grim line.

 

“I- I was sick so I went to brush my teeth and then... then I...” He babbles in shock. Are all his teeth going to fall out? Is he a zombie? Are all of his parts going to fall off one by one like some kind of fucking undead leper?

 

“Open up.” Chopper says calmly. Sanji obliges. Chopper's fingers delicately go over the area where his tooth was before going over each other tooth in his mouth, touching them and prodding at them to see if they'll move. To Sanji's horror five other teeth in his mouth do. The matching canine on the other side, both sets of teeth on the top that sit next to his canines, closer to his molars and the two bottom canines in his mouth. All of them wobble when Chopper pokes at them.

 

“Hmm.” Chopper hums unhappily.

 

“Head back.” He orders, tilting Sanji's jaw back and peering into his mouth. Eventually Chopper removes his hands from Sanji’s mouth and takes off his gloves.

 

“Well? Am I going to lose all of them? Am I rotting away?” Sanji asks, his words shaking as much as he is.

 

“That was my first guess, but... no. You can't see from the angle that you're at, but the tooth that has fallen out has a new one growing in it's place, it's just ever so slightly breaching the gum right now. You can only see it if your head is tilted back like that. You're not really losing your teeth, you seem to be growing new ones.” Chopper says academically.

 

“These aren't fucking baby teeth Chopper, these are my adult teeth, how can I be growing new ones?!” Sanji demands.

 

“I'm just telling you what I see.” Chopper huffs.

 

“Sorry, I didn't mean to yell.” Sanji apologises quickly.

 

“It's ok. It's been a... difficult day for everyone.” Chopper says quietly, turning back to his desk and dropping the tooth into a glass vial. Sanji notes the file with his name on it on Chopper's desk and the black shirt draped over the back of a chair. Chopper isn't just his nakama, he's his doctor. Sanji wonders if he is the first of Chopper's patients to die. Just looking at the little doctor he can see that Chopper blames himself for it.

 

Sanji recalls looking at his chest and shoulder in the mirror of the bathroom and realises that he didn't have any cuts on him, none that he'd expected from an autopsy or anything. He considers asking why but decides not to, he doesn't want to upset the kid any more than he already has done. Besides, the answer is probably that he couldn't bear to do it, or didn't want to desecrate Sanji's body by doing it.

 

“You're probably going to lose those other teeth that were loose, but the rest seem fine. Give me half an hour and then I can do a full assessment of you, I just need to re-read my notes.” Chopper says, not looking at Sanji and instead moving the thick file back to himself and reopening it.

 

“Sure, I'll... I'll come back.” He agrees and gets up to go to the door.

 

He lets himself out and then goes back on deck. Zoro is sitting with his back against the mast, his face towards the sun dozing gently to sleep. Sanji stands on deck and feels more than a little lost. He runs his tongue along the inside of his mouth, along his teeth. His tongue sticks on the gap where his canine was and he carefully pokes at the gum there with the tip. Sure enough he can feel a little point of a new tooth growing in, something he hasn't felt since he was a small child losing his baby teeth. He presses his tongue to the loose teeth in his mouth and feels them wobble. He doesn't want to live with the dread of wondering when they're going to come out, he should just... he should just take them out himself.

 

He brings his fingers to his mouth and closes his index and thumb to his canine tooth. He wiggles it slightly and feels it move. Right, all he has to do now is to yank on it and it'll come out. He'll do it on three. One. Two. Three.... agh, he can't do it. Whatever stupid self preservation instincts that he has left won't let him pry his teeth out of his own skull. The very thought of doing it makes his skin crawl more than Usopp’s nails on a chalkboard attack. Still, he doesn't want to just wait for it to happen again, that would be worse.

 

“Oi Zoro.” He calls out, walking over to the swordsman.

 

“What?” Zoro demands, opening one golden eye and looking at him suspiciously.

 

“I need you to punch me in the mouth.” He says, standing in front of Zoro.

 

“Say what?” Zoro blinks and rubs at his ear as if he might have misheard.

 

“Apparently I'm losing some teeth and growing new ones. One already came out and I don't want to sit around waiting for them to come out, so I want you to punch me in the face and make them fall out. I didn't think I'd need to ask you twice.” He huffs, his hands on his hips. Zoro springs to his feet with a look of sadistic glee on his face.

 

“No you don't. Which teeth?” He grins, bouncing on his feet and rolling his wrists to warm them up.

 

Sanji opens his mouth and points to each of them. Zoro leans in and squints at the one that he's already lost.

 

“Shit, yeah, you've got something growing in there. Ok, shut your trap and hold still.” Zoro beams.

 

Sanji shuts his mouth and glares at Zoro as the swordsman winds up for a punch. The hard part isn't the pain or the dread of the punch, it's repressing his instinct to dodge and whirl back with a kick. Zoro's punch connects to his face, hard and spins Sanji right around. He drops to his knees and coughs out a mouth full of blood and two teeth. Now that it's not contaminated with toothpaste foam Sanji can see that the blood looks weird, old and dark and far too thick. It stops running immediately, as if it had just dripped out of place and stopped. Well, he doesn't have a heartbeat so he supposes it makes sense.

 

“Two down.” he says thickly, getting up again and showing Zoro the two teeth in his palm. It's his right canine and the one to the right of it, the smaller one. There's probably a technical term for it but fuck if Sanji knows what it is.

 

“Cool. Look that way.” Zoro instructs him.

 

This time it's a left hook and Sanji is reminded as he spins to the ground that Zoro is indeed left handed and stronger on that side. This time he spits out the remaining tooth next to the gap he already had and it's partner on the bottom jaw. He picks them up too and stuffs them in his pocket.

 

“One left marimo, don't mith.” Sanji lisps slightly, pointing to the right place.

 

“I think I can manage.” Zoro assures him and punches him in the jaw. Sanji feels the tooth come free and spits it into his palm.

 

“Ugh. Thankth.” Sanji grumbles and slides to the floor, his back against the mast. Zoro settles down next to him, clearly pleased.

 

“Hey, don't mention it. Any time you need punching in the face, don't hesitate to tell me, I'm your guy. What are friends for after all?” Zoro grins at him, his perfectly white and full set of teeth gleaming as he smiles. Sanji squishes the surge of jealousy in him.

 

“You're a real thaint.” He responds, rolling his eyes.

 

“Nice lisp.” Zoro snickers.

 

“Fuuuuck you.” Sanji retorts, flipping him off.

 

Sanji expects some retort but Zoro is just looking at him, his face serious. Zoro leans forward, his fingers brushing Sanji's jaw as he leans closer. If Sanji lungs were still breathing and he still had a beating heart he's pretty sure that they would be doing something right now, but they're not.

 

Zoro runs his warm calloused thumb over Sanji's jaw, along where his fist connected.

 

“It's so odd... you're not going red or bleeding more or anything...” Zoro says quietly, tilting Sanji's face this way and that to look at him.

 

“Perk of being dead I gueth.” Sanji says, lisping again. Shit, he needs to stop saying words with the letter s in it.

 

He closes his eyes and rests his head against the mast. He is perfectly still, nothing going on inside of him and so he is completely motionless. He hears Zoro sigh by his side and settle back into his place on the mast too, the two of them just resting side by side. Sanji's stillness only highlights just how much movement there is in Zoro. He can feel every little muscle of Zoro's body move, tiny little ones as his body stabilises him. He hears each soft breath go in and out of Zoro's body, moving him ever so slightly. He can feel the air around Zoro move softly as the heat coming from his body interacts with the air around him. By comparison Sanji is as inanimate as the mast they're leaning against.

 

He is aware of time passing in a distant sort of way, as if it's just something that's sort of happening around him, not something that he's part of. He's not sleeping, he's not even really thinking, just waiting.

 

“Is he okay?” Chopper's voice says, and Sanji opens his eyes. The little reindeer looks concerned, but relief quickly crosses his face when Sanji looks at him.

 

“Oh Sanji, thank goodness, I thought you were... well... never mind.” Chopper says, shaking his head and smiling in embarrassment.

 

“Dead?” Sanji says flatly.

 

“Your teeth! They fell out?” Chopper says, his eyes widening as he comes close to him and Zoro.

 

“Yeah, they fell out.” Sanji lies and he feels Zoro shift beside him, no doubt shifting his hands out of sight just in case his knuckles are red from the punches that he gave him.

 

“You want 'em?” Sanji offers, fishing them from his pocket and holding them out. Chopper nods and takes them from him.

 

Sanji almost thinks that he’s got away with it until Chopper leans in and peers at him a little more closely and then pokes at the corner of Sanji’s mouth with a hard little hoof.

 

“You have a bruise there, or something like it. Let me see…” Chopper says slowly, turning Sanji’s head this way and that. At Sanji’s side Zoro has gone very still, as if doesn’t move then Chopper might not see him and put two and two together.

 

“Hah, weird, huh? Leths go, ok?” Sanji says brightly, leaping to his feet and pulling Chopper along. The two of them return to the infirmary where Sanji is made to sit back down on the bed whilst Chopper adds the rest of his knocked out teeth to the vial on his desk. The little doctor runs him through test after test over the next two hours, testing his reflexes, which turn out to be absent. His legs don't kick when Chopper hits him in the knee and his eyes don't respond to light being shone in them and taken away. The reindeer spends a good ten minutes jabbing Sanji with a pin all over his body, asking him if he can feel it, to which Sanji replies every time with a grudging yes until he eventually asks Chopper to please stop doing it.

 

When Chopper asks him to breathe he tests his lung capacity, which was the same as it was when he was alive, but after that Sanji stops breathing again, something which seems to completely unnerve Chopper. Sanji feels bad for spooking the kid out, it's no doubt been a trying day so he really ought to make it easier on him. He tries to focus on breathing normally to make him feel more at ease but every so often he forgets and stops doing it, his sudden stop/start routine of breathing freaks the little doctor out more so Sanji just sticks with not doing it at all.

 

“Chopper, I think we've agreed that my heart doethn't beat.” Sanji sighs wearily as the doctor listens to his chest again.

 

“But I can't understand how you're operating without one, it shouldn't work.” Chopper insists, pressing his ear to Sanji's back. He's long since abandoned his stethoscope, perhaps figuring that it's broken or something.

 

“Brook doethn't have a heartbeat.” He points out.

 

“Brook doesn't have a heart, or a circulatory system. It's not really a problem for him.” the doctor huffs.

 

“You are, by every measure that exists that I know of, dead.” The doctor concludes, dropping onto the bed next to Sanji and looking up at him with big brown worried eyes.

 

“Exthept for the walking, talking, moving part?” the cook points out, raising a curly eyebrow at the doctor.

 

“Well yes, that's is a bit... non traditional.” the reindeer admits.

 

“Thith lithping is getting really annoying. When are my new teeth going to grow back?” Sanji demands in irritation, poking at the empty spaces with his tongue and feeling little points coming through his gums.

 

“You're dead, I have no way of predicting how anything works. I would try to take a blood sample to understand you better but your heart's not beating and all your blood has congealed inside you, so I can't even do that. I have no point of reference to work from here, you'll have to wait and see.” The doctor exclaims, throwing his hands in the air in exasperation.

 

“Thorry Chopper, I know thith is hard on you.” Sanji says quietly. He wants answers and part of him... perhaps a larger part than he is willing to admit, is scared by all of this. However, none of this is Chopper's fault and it's unreasonable to expect him to know everything about this, just because he can cure other things that ail you doesn't mean that he can fix something he's never seen before.

 

“It's ok, we'll work on it. I'll be able to get some information from the tissue in the pulp of your teeth that you gave me.” Chopper says, having climbed up onto Sanji's lap and wrapped his little arms around Sanji's neck.

 

There is a pause where Sanji doesn't ask. Is Chopper going to mush up his teeth or what?

 

“That's the bit in the middle of your tooth. The part that gets blood flow. I ought to be able to find out what was going on just before you- before you died.” Chopper explains.

 

Sanji feels a flash of guilt inside of him. He did this, he left them. It wasn't his fault, not really, but part of him feels like he should have hung on, that he should have been able to beat this, to stay alive. If only he had been stronger then he wouldn't have put his nakama through all of that. They've all rolled with the punch of his resurrection well, you have to as a member of the crew. So much happens and changes all the time, you have to be able to take on a change and go with it, there's rarely time to ask questions or deal with it right away.

 

Even so, they were burying him. As well as they could at sea anyway. His nakama had dressed for a funeral and dressed him, God, who had taken the job of doing that? Somehow he suspects it was Zoro. The obvious choice would be Chopper, a doctor would be well within his remit to prepare a dead body. Still, if Zoro could save any of his nakama from pain then he would walk over hot coals to do so. And so... Zoro. Zoro might be a distant sort of man, hard to work out and very annoying when he wants to be, but Sanji knows that he's not emotionless. For all of their differences and disputes Zoro would have hurt when he died. All of them did. What did they feel when they went in his kitchen? How did they deal with the first meal that they had to cook without him? The first night when he didn't sleep in the bunk room with them? He has done nothing yet he has caused so much pain.

 

“Forgive me.” He breathes quietly, holding on to Chopper and pushing his face into the soft fur of his body.

 

“Oh Sanji... Sanji. I'm just so grateful that you're back. I'll do everything that I can, we'll make this better, I won't fail you again I-” Chopper babbles, sniffling into Sanji's shirt.

 

“You didn't fail me, not at all. It will be ok.” Sanji promises, though he has no idea if it will.

 

“Ok.” Chopper agrees, pulling back and wiping his damp fur with his hooves.

 

“Ok.” He repeats again, as if to make it more so.

 

“Right, I should... I should look at what I've got and try to work something out to help you.” Chopper says, nodding at himself and looking over at Sanji's teeth in his little vial. Chopper looks a little brighter now that he has a plan. He can research and study, that's what doctors do.

 

“I'll leave you to it.” Sanji says with his slightly gap filled smile.

 

He gets up and leaves, leaving Chopper to his microscope and science. Sanji wishes that he was still alive, he feels stressed but can't quite relieve it. He deliberately draws a big breath in and sighs loudly. He feels a little better. He heads to the men's bunkroom, planning on removing his suit in an effort to stop reminding everyone that they were trying to bury him this morning.

 

He opens his locker and sees that several of his shirts are hung up wrong. Well, not wrong, just not how he hangs them up. Someone else has been in here. Curiously he steps to the side and pushes the door to Zoro's locker open. Most of Zoro's clothes are balled up in a heap at the bottom or stuffed on a shelf at the top. Some however, the nicer shirts like the one he was wearing to Sanji's funeral, are hung up on the rail inside the locker. They are specifically hung up the same way that several of Sanji's shirts are hung up. Zoro's been in his locker.

 

Sanji closes the door to Zoro's locker and returns to his own. That adds to his theory that it was Zoro who dressed him then. He wonders how he did it. Did Zoro lay him on a bunk and do it or spread him out on the floor? His hand goes to his breast pocket and remembers that Zoro's bandana was in there. He can see it now, him laid out, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling and Zoro looking down at him. Him all dressed up in his best suit, ready for the final embrace of the deep ocean. Something in Zoro made him leave his bandana with him. Perhaps he didn't want Sanji to be entirely alone in the sea.

 

He shakes the thought away and notices that the shirt he was wearing on... well, on the day he died, is missing. He wonders what they did with it. Sanji opens his suit jacket first, undoing the buttons and sliding it onto a hanger. The shirt comes next, buttons coming undone from the top first and then to the bottom. The shirt goes onto a different hanger. He toes his shoes off and when water sloshes out of them he realises that all of his clothes are still damp. He supposes that with no body heat to dry them that they'll stay that way for a while. Reluctantly he takes the clothes hangers out of his locker and hooks them onto the line that they use to dry clothes in the bunkroom. He peels his socks off and adds them to the line, then his black trousers and underwear.

 

He grabs a towel and makes his skin a little less clammy and removes the water that had run down his back when he took the shirt off. New underwear goes on without Sanji really having to think about it, but the rest of his outfit takes a little work. When he reaches for a pair of black jeans he sees just how pale the colour makes him look by contrast, an ashy white. He moves to a pair of olive jeans and they make him look a little less colourless. He puts them on. An orange shirt adds a little more to the colour and then he just picks a pair of shoes to give him a complete outfit. The mirror shows someone who looks a little less dead.

 

The mirror also shows Zoro opening the door behind him. The swordsman's eyes are down and he's fiddling with the hilt of the cursed blade, something is amiss and it's got most of Zoro's attention. The sword is entirely replaced in Zoro's focus when he sees Sanji though. The two of them stare at each other from the other side of the room.

 

“I don't bite.” Sanji offers weakly.

 

“Yeah, I should hope not. It worked out real well for you the last time you did.” Zoro snorts. Sanji grins. The rest of the crew may tiptoe around him a little, or be tearful, but Zoro's black humour has no remorse. Sanji likes it, the swordsman isn't in denial but he's still dealing with shit in his own way and in a way that makes Sanji laugh as well.

 

Zoro goes to his locker and then for some sword maintenance thing in some kind of box that Zoro’s probably had since forever. He leans against the side of his locker and watches Zoro work in silence. Zoro doesn't do small talk, if he has nothing of import to say then he doesn't say anything at all.

 

“I upthet Chopper. He'th not... taking it well.” Sanji says with regret.

 

“No one is really. Brook is handling it the best, which makes it kind of worse, he's got more practice at losing nakama after all.” Zoro answers and puts his sword thingie away in his locker again and checks the cursed blade over, seemingly satisfied with... whatever it was that had bothered him about the blade.

 

“I'm awful, I've hurt everyone.” He whines.

 

“Knock that off.” Zoro snaps and thumps his hand on the top of Sanji's head.

 

“OI!” Sanji snaps back and kicks Zoro in the leg.

 

“Guilt doesn't fix shit, so drop it.” Zoro elaborates in his particularly ineloquent manner.

 

“Whatever.” Sanji responds maturely and leans against his locker again. His eyes drift up to his hanging clothes.

 

“It wath you.” He says, rather than asks, gesturing to his suit. He doesn't want to have to put himself through the indignity of saying “dressed me in my best suit” too many s's in there.

 

Zoro looks up at where Sanji is pointing and nods. The cook watches Zoro's jaw tighten ever so slightly.

 

“Ok, here'th the deal. We do thith once and we never have to talk about it again.” Sanji says, pushing himself off of his locker and facing Zoro.

 

“Do what?” Zoro says, but as he's doing it Sanji just goes for it.

 

He steps close to Zoro and wraps his arms around him. He presses his face into Zoro's shoulder and squeezes his eyes shut.

 

“You shouldn’t have had to do it.” He says, his voice sounding hoarse even to his own ears.

 

“But, thank you for not letting the otherth do it.” Sanji says into Zoro’s collarbone. Behind his eyes he sees Chopper, the reindeer who’s still a kid as far as Sanji is concerned, with trembling hooves trying to do up Sanji’s buttons after already trying to bring him back to life. He pictures Usopp trying to be brave for the others and saying that he’ll do it, that he’ll make Sanji look like a hero and breaking down unable to do it and hating himself for not being able to. But Zoro saved them from that. Zoro stepped in and did what had to be done, even if it hurt, just like he always does.

 

After a moment Zoro's own arms close around Sanji too and the cook feels Zoro breathe out in a shaky kind of way. His hands tighten for a second on the fabric of his Sanji's orange shirt, as if trying to make sure that he doesn't slip out of his grasp. He’s here and he’s not intending on ever going anywhere again, he won’t put his crew through that again.

 

After a little while they pull apart, he's counting time by Zoro's heartbeats, he doesn't have his own any more after all. It's a little bit slow when they do, they don't spring apart like kids afraid of cooties, but instead it's more normal. Sanji looks at Zoro, his eyes are shut and his brows pulled together, he looks like he's hurt. He breathes in, and out, the expression fades and Zoro opens his eyes.

 

“You should see Usopp, he needs to see that you're ok.” Zoro says in a firm voice.

 

“Yeah, good idea.” Sanji agrees with a nod and heads towards the door. He looks back at Zoro who is looking at Sanji's hung up suit. He wants to say something, anything, about the suit, about him, about the hug. He forces himself not to and goes off to find Usopp.

  
  


By the end of the day Sanji has managed to make his way around to everyone except for Brook. Everyone else has gone to bed, gone to sleep, except for Brook. He's on watch and Sanji stares up at his skeletal shape against the moon, the light diffusing through his afro and gleaming off of bone. He doesn't feel tired, not at all. So instead of making his way down to sleep, or to attempt to at least, he heads up into the crow's nest with Brook.

 

“Hi.” He greets as he comes inside the room.

 

“Hello there Sanji.” The skeleton greets.

 

“Is it my turn now to get the reassuring visit from you?” Brook asks, a lilt of teasing in his voice but also a note of seriousness. Sanji freezes for a second, guilt curling inside of him.

 

“That obvious huh?” He says after a few moments and settles down next to Brook. He runs his tongue along the inside of his mouth. His new teeth are growing remarkably fast, all of them are outside of his gums now, even if they are way lower than the rest of his teeth at the moment. It feels weird as fuck but it's killed his lisp and that is something that he is unendingly grateful for.

 

“You've been trying to make sure that everyone is ok, to show them that you're fine.” Brook remarks softly, looking out at the sea. Sanji rests himself in the seat next to Brook, two cold dead people side by side. He looks out of the opposite window into the inky blackness of the sea, there aren't any other ships out there, not within eyesight at least.

 

“Well, I have to undo the damage I caused somehow.” He admits.

 

“It's not your fault. Just because they hurt because of you doesn't mean that it's your fault, you didn't hurt them.” Brook explains carefully. Sanji isn't so dumb as to not notice that Brook is referring to the crew as 'them', like he's not in the group of people who have been hurt by his death. He remembers all too well Zoro's words about Brook, about how simultaneously well and poorly he's dealing with the aftermath of Sanji's death.

 

“Can I still be sorry in a non-responsible kind of way? Because I am sorry.” He asks, shooting Brook a sideways look. There's a gleam of amusement in Brook's empty eye sockets. Sanji has long given up trying to explain how he understands how Brook is looking at him or even if he is looking at him. He just knows, all of them do.

 

“I suppose that's allowed.” Brook concedes with a laughing undertone in his voice.

 

They fall silent for a little bit. Their conversation is slow and unhurried. He supposes that between them they have all the time in the world. God, he might not age at all now. Is he going to have to watch his nakama die? Hopefully of old age after a successful life but... well... with people like Luffy that's doubtful. Is he going to have to see that? Brook has had to, but God, how can he manage that?

 

“So, I guess the number of crew members in the living dead club on this ship has expanded then.” He says quietly.

 

“As the president of the club I would like to welcome you. Club membership includes unnerving the living and unwanted immortality.” Brook laughs, though there is a hollowness to it.

 

“Ugh. Sounds like a shitty club.” Sanji grumbles.

 

“Sorry, can't leave it once you've joined. No take backs.” Brook says blackly.

 

“Well, shit.” the cook concludes and lets his head tip back against the glass.

 

“You get perks though. You don't have to worry about getting old or getting sick, you've got lots of time to do all the things you ever wanted to but didn't have time to. Books to read, skills to learn. Lots of time.” Brook says. Sanji would normally expect a skull joke in there somewhere but he's never heard Brook talk this frankly about being dead before.

 

“At least I don't have to do it alone.” He says weakly, and for that he is selfishly glad. Brook has had to be alone with his immortality all this time, to deal with being a dead man by himself, but Sanji has Brook. He supposes that as well, Brook now has him. Someone who won't age and die around him.

 

“No you don't. YOHOHOHOHOHOHO!” Brook laughs suddenly, making Sanji jump a little in surprise.

 

“So Sanji, are you having trouble sleeping?” The skeleton questions him, no doubt curious as to why he's up here, assuming that Sanji isn't just up here to reassure Brook that he's ok. Frankly he doesn't know how to reassure Brook that he's ok when he isn't sure himself that he is and Brook knows full fucking well that being dead isn't entirely okay no matter what. Can't lie to a dead man.

 

“Yeah, I don't feel tired at all. So much for sleeping like the dead.” Sanji snorts.

 

“YOHOHOHOHOHO! Good one!” Brook laughs loudly and obnoxiously.

 

“It's a hormone thing, your body isn't telling you to sleep anymore. You can probably teach yourself to if you want, I did when I joined the crew here.” Brook explains with a skeletal smile.

 

“You didn't sleep before then? Tell me it's not going to take me fifty years to learn.” He groans, he's not sure that he can bear that.

 

“No, it was pretty quick for me. I just didn't do it when I was alone. ...wasn't sure if I'd wake up again. I wasn't sure if I wanted to.” Brook adds somberly.

 

Sanji looks at Brook for a while. The musician has never spoken like this to him before, or as far as he knows, to anyone else. Sure, they'd all caught glimpses of Brook's feelings about being dead, kernels of truth in the occasional skull joke. He'd let slip insight into dark things now and then but as soon as he ever did he'd cover it up with a laugh and some silliness. He supposes that Brook didn't want to bring them down. But Sanji is already dead, Brook can't make him imagine how being dead feels like, not like he can to the living. The reality of being a corpse is one that Sanji is living himself now, in a manner of speaking at least.

 

“God, my mouth hurts.” Sanji complains, rubbing at his face. He can almost hear his teeth growing inside his head. He supposes that his system has a lot of energy to devote to it. He doesn't need to keep his heart beating or his breath flowing, he doesn't have to digest food and break it down, his muscles don't have to be fed, nothing. All his body needs to do right now is grow him new teeth and they are growing like nobody's business. He runs his tongue over them, they're sharp but he supposes that they have to be to get out of his gums so quickly.

 

“You did get Zoro to punch you in the face several times.” Brook laughs easily, still looking out to sea. Sanji's eyes widen, how did Brook know about that?

 

“YOHOHOHOHOHO! Robin isn't the only one with eyes everywhere, although, I don't have any eyes! YOHOHOHOHOHO!” Brook laughs loudly.

 

Sanji smiles softly and leans his head against the glass, watching out of the opposite window to Brook, the two dead men keeping watch. At some point in the night Brook starts playing his violin. Sanji doesn't sleep as such, his eyes are open and he's aware. He watches the night gently pass around him and the sun rise, he listens to Brook's violin and feels the ache in his mouth from his teeth.

 

When the pain in his mouth abruptly stops he jerks into alertness, not out of sleep because he wasn't sleeping, just back into full speed as it were.

 

“Does it still hurt?” Brooks asks him, noticing his movement.

 

“Actually, no. It just stopped.” Sanji remarks, rubbing at his jaw, the dull ache having vanished and left nothing in its wake.

 

“Oh, let's see.” Brook asks, leaning forward towards Sanji.

 

Sanji opens his mouth as wide as he can, curling his lip back so Brook can see as best he can. The skeleton peers into his mouth, taking in his new teeth, they feel longer than before somehow.

 

“I think I know what you are.” Brook says slowly, touching one of Sanji's new teeth.

 

At that moment the hatch to the crow's nest bangs open and Usopp's head and shoulders appear through it. Sanji looks around, mouth still open for Brook. Usopp's eyes rise to meet him and suddenly the teenager blanches in fear and shrieks, dropping immediately out of sight with hurried footsteps.

 

“Usopp...” Sanji gasps, standing up.

 

“Take a look for yourself. You bit the man who bit you, I'm sure you can work it out.” Brook says, reaching a hand into his suit jacket and taking out a folding mirror. He tosses it through the air to Sanji and the cook catches it with ease. He flicks it open and takes in his reflection. He opens his mouth wide and stares at his reflection, the image that he sees there sending a cold feeling down his spine.

 

His missing teeth have been replaced by long sharp fangs. The longest and sharpest being his upper front canines, they stretch down to where his bottom teeth meet his gums, moving into razor sharp points. He looks like a deadly animal, but worse he knows just what he looks like. No wonder Usopp ran away with a shriek.

 

“Yeah, I'm a monster.” He says bitterly and throws the mirror back to Brook who catches it and puts it away.

 

“You're still Sanji.” Brook reminds him.

  
Sanji shakes his head, he doesn't feel like it. He doesn't feel like he deserves that name any more. 


	3. Chapter 3

Chopper narrows his eyes, skepticism written all over his tiny furry face. The whole crew is sat out on the lawn deck, though Sanji can't help but notice that Usopp is the furthest away from him. Even if Usopp is the kind of guy who could get scared by his own farts, Sanji feels bad for scaring him. For once he's not done it deliberately. Usopp isn't scared of a threat that he's made, something he's said or something he's told him. No, Usopp is scared of him, of what he is. That hurts Sanji right down into his core.

 

Zoro is sitting and watching the crew's exchange in silence, his legs crossed and his chin resting on Wado's hilt where she sits pointing up from the ground. The rest of his nakama are engaged in the lively debate around him, more or less over his head and without his participation.

 

“There is no such thing as vampires.” Chopper says for what must be at least the third time.

 

“Have you seen those chompers? Total vampire, plus he's dead.” Franky snorts, he's firmly in the vampire camp.

 

“Yeah, but in case you haven't noticed, it's daylight out. He's not catching fire.” Nami retorts, she's in the not a vampire camp. She's right too, the whole crew are sitting on the lawn deck in the bright, clear, morning sunshine. There's not a cloud in the sky and even Sanji's pale dead skin feels a little warmer for the rays of light, far from the whole bursting into a fiery second death kind of situation that you'd expect from a vampire.

 

“I could set him on fire if it’d make you feel better about it.” Zoro offers with a grin.

 

“Or I could drown you in the ocean, only one of us has to breathe now.” Sanji snaps back, baring his new fangs at the other man.

 

“I think they're really cool, can I touch them Sanji?” Luffy asks, eyes sparkling as he eyes Sanji's new teeth. Sanji opens his mouth to let him, he knows it's always far easier just to let Luffy get what he wants than to protest. But before Luffy's hands can come into contact with his teeth Chopper yelps and slaps Luffy's hands away from Sanji's mouth.

 

“Luffy don't! You don't know what you could catch from him! I'm not having anyone else end up dead!” Chopper yells.

 

Sanji's shoulders fall, now he feels like a fucking leper or something. Everyone else is busy arguing over his head about what he is and what should be done about it. Everyone except one person, Zoro. Zoro is just watching him, so Sanji looks back. Zoro gives him a small half smile, it looks slightly wry, like “can you believe these idiots?”, it makes Sanji smile too. His smile pulls back and shows off his new teeth, out of the corner of his eye he sees Usopp flinch and his smile drops, hiding his teeth again.

 

“What do you think Sanji?” Zoro asks. He doesn't shout, but his voice is loud enough for everyone to hear and it's in his serious voice, which always gets attention. The others fall silent around them and they all look right at Sanji. The cook bristles, he didn't like being talked over but he doesn't like being the centre of attention right now either. As is often the case he's torn between being grateful to Zoro and wanting to kick him in the face.

 

“I don't know what to think.” he answers, and his voice sounds smaller than he'd intended it to.

 

“Well how about testing the vampire theory, then at least we can rule something out, right?” Zoro asks, and it's clear that he's asking. He's not talking to the crew at large, he's not telling him what to do, he's asking. He's asking Sanji to be specific.

 

“Yeah.” Sanji nods. If nothing else knowing something about what the shit is happening might help him get some direction here.

 

“I'd love to help Zoro, but I don't exactly have a vampirism test that I can just run on Sanji. If I did then I would have done it already. Besides, there's no such thing.” Chopper restates again.

 

“Says the talking reindeer in conversation with the skeleton, a cyborg, a rubber boy and a dead man. Shortly after we left an island filled with zombies.” Robin says in her dry tone. Zoro snickers silently at that, his shoulders shaking in mirth.

 

Chopper's fur bristles in irritation at having the obvious pointed out to him like that. This is the Grand Line after all, impossible doesn't really work here.

 

“I still don't have a test.” He reasons.

 

“You do have blood though, right?” Sanji suddenly asks, remembering the cooler full of donated blood that Chopper keeps in case of emergencies. It's a sensible precaution, considering that Luffy and Zoro both have a long time habit of spurting out blood in fights like particularly macabre fountains.

 

“Yes...” Chopper frowns at him, clearly not liking the direction that this is going.

 

“So how about I try drinking some. I mean, I'm already dead, what harm can it do?” Sanji points out. It's so obvious, why hadn't the idea occurred to any of them before now?

 

“I guess the worst that happens is you spew all over the side of the ship again, and food already makes you do that.” Zoro reasons with a shrug.

 

“Wait, you did what on the side of my ship?” Franky butts in, but Sanji and Zoro studiously ignore him.

 

“I suppose that we could spare a little...” Chopper says thoughtfully before scurrying off, presumably to get the blood.

 

He comes back with a chilled bag of blood and cautiously puts it in Sanji's palm, not like he's afraid of him, but more like he doesn't think that medical supplies should be used this way.

 

Sanji weighs it up in his palm. Even to him it feels cold to the touch, it feels a little wrong, blood should be warm. He sloshes the bag side to side in his hand for a moment whilst he tries to figure out the logistics of trying to eat this.

 

“Go on then, bite it.” Franky urges him on.

 

“What? No way! It'd burst and get everywhere and I like this shirt!” Sanji points out. He's wearing a blue t-shirt with a duck on it and though it's a little cutesy he secretly adores it. He's not willing to get blood all down it.

 

“What do you want then prissy cook? A straw? It's not a goddamn juice box.” Zoro snorts derisively at him. Sanji flips him off enthusiastically with both hands, the bag of blood still held in his left.

 

“There's a little valve just here Sanji, let me.” the doctor offers, pulling Sanji's hand close, standing the blood bag upside down and undoing the valve. Sanji supposes that if this was being used for its proper purpose then this is the part which would connect to an IV to the patient. He notes from the label on the bag that this is in fact Usopp's blood. He decides not to share that fact with the cowardly sniper in case he freaks out and thinks that Sanji is in danger of getting a taste for him.

 

Sanji licks his lips anxiously and brings the bag towards himself, trying to ignore the weight of everyone's gaze on him. He sniffs and a tang of chemicals assault his nose, not how he's used to blood smelling at all.

 

“What's in this? It smells like Usopp's workshop after he's been messing about with chemicals and shit.” Sanji says wrinkling his nose. It occurs to him a little too late that maybe it smells like that because that could be what Usopp smells like, perhaps his chemicals have leached into his bloodstream. He hopes not, that can't be healthy.

 

“There's a serum in there that stops the blood clotting, it makes it viable for storage and later use.” the little doctor explains in his best scientific voice.

 

Sanji's mouth pulls down at the corners at the idea, but it's no more gross than drinking human blood. He steels himself and brings the bag to his lips, might as well get this over with. He tips the bag back and drinks, the thick liquid swirling in his mouth before sliding cooly down his throat. He takes another gulp and another before stopping and taking the bag from his mouth. It's about half empty now.

 

Sanji winces, his mouth tastes like shit and his teeth feel covered in an oily film that makes a shudder go up his back. All the same, his stomach feels just fine, good in fact. He wouldn't say that he feels satisfied like he would after a good meal, but a little less hungry, like he'd had a snack. Shit, he had been hungry, he just hadn't recognised it because he didn't want food. When Zoro had given him the banana he hadn't felt hungry for it because that wasn't what he was wired to eat now. But this... this seems to be it.

 

“Well?” Nami asks, snapping him back to the present.

 

“It's kind of gross.” Sanji says, pulling a face.

 

“It’s blood. That's pretty gross.” Nami points out.

 

“No, not like that. It tastes... like shitty mass produced chemical filled fast food. My mouth tastes awful and it's almost... greasy. Ugh.” Sanji says wrinkling his nose in disgust.

 

“You're an undead food snob, of course you are.” Zoro groans, smacking his forehead in despair.

 

“But it does feel like food then?” Nami prompts him.

 

Sanji looks away, scowling out at the sea. Somewhere out there his old man is working at the Baratie preparing actual food. Soup, stews, pasta and anything else that can be found in a recipe book, but here he is drinking blood from a bag and having to answer if it’s food or not.

 

Sanji can’t stand to answer but he has to, so he nods short and sharp.

 

He glances down once more at the bag in his hand. He is still kind of hungry and now that he knows it he's finding it a little hard to keep depriving himself. His stomach rumbles ominously and Sanji feels a pang of hunger run through him. He grits his teeth. Is this what he is now? He wants to take another drink but the reminder of the chemical tang that the blood was filled with stays his hand. He chews on his lip uncomfortably and tunes back in to find several of the others arguing and saying that they told each other so with regards to him being a vampire.

 

“Chopper,” Robin says, her soft voice breaking through the hubbub and getting Sanji's attention. He looks up at her, Robin's thick black hair slides over her shoulder like silk as she leans down to talk to Chopper.

 

“If we've established that blood is what Sanji needs then perhaps we should give him some that doesn't have those chemicals in it. You don't really need your stock being raided and who knows what anti-coagulants will do to someone whose system is set up to drink blood.” She says in her smooth melodious voice. Sanji is sure that if his heart was still beating it would be fluttering right now.

 

“That would be sensible, I'd hate to need it and then not have any because Sanji has been drinking it.” Chopper agrees with a little nod and takes the bag of blood off of Sanji's hands. He's glad to have it gone really.

 

“I don't want to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt.” Sanji agrees.

 

“So we're looking at live donation perhaps?” Robin muses, crouching down to Chopper's side.

 

“I'm not letting him BITE anyone! Who knows what they could catch? I don't want more undead on the ship!” Chopper squawks and Sanji flinches. The doctor's right, he's a monster and he has every right to protect his crew.

 

“That's a little insensitive Chopper, Sanji is right here you know.” Robin scolds the little reindeer gently. Chopper's eyes widen and he looks at Sanji, realising that he said something that he shouldn't have out loud.

 

“I- I didn't mean it like that Sanji! I'm sorry!” Chopper gasps, looking wide eyed at Sanji. Sanji smiles, but it's a little dead. Hah, he just made a joke, a bad one. He feels a little like he should have shared something that bad and morbid with Brook. He doesn't want the doctor to feel bad but he's not sure which idea hurts more, that Chopper is seeing him more as an infection than a person or the implication that Chopper is still sensitive to his feelings but has started to forget that Sanji is still alive and can hear him. Or alive as a dead man can be.

 

“It's ok Chopper.” Sanji responds a little numbly.

 

“Well, we'd need to take blood from another crew member. I have tubing that has one way valves in it, that ought to stop any infection from getting back to the donor. That way we I can set up an IV line, that ought to be the best way to do it.” Chopper says.

 

“I'll do it.” Luffy says suddenly, standing up on his feet and getting the full attention of everyone on deck as he does so.

 

“Well... ok, I'll go get the supplies.” Chopper says after a few stunned seconds. He turns around and, with a flash of his little deer tail, rushes off to the infirmary.

 

“You hate needles and injections...” Sanji says softly, looking up at his captain. He watches the small shiver run through Luffy, presumably at the idea of having to get a needle poked into him.

 

“'sonly fair, think of how much you feed me!” Luffy laughs loudly, dropping down to sit on the lawn deck right by Sanji. The cook squints at Luffy and comes to his own conclusions. Luffy is insane when it comes to the lengths that he'll go to in order to protect his nakama. Regardless of the fact that Sanji is sitting up and talking to his nakama the fact remains that he's dead and he'd be ignorant to assume that Luffy wasn't beating himself up about that. If this is some way of Luffy paying him back then he supposes that he's in no place to turn down that sort of kindness.

 

Chopper comes back with some plastic piping, needles, swabs and other medical paraphernalia. He settles himself between Sanji and Luffy and runs a sterilising wipe over the crook of his captain's elbow before sliding a needle under Luffy's skin. The rubber boy winces and Sanji feels a sharp stab of guilt, probably much worse than the little nick that Luffy is feeling right now. His nakama is going through this because of him, it's not right. Chopper clicks a vial into place against the screw cap at the end of the needle. As soon as he does dark red blood starts to fill the vial. He's seen these before, this is the kind of thing that Chopper does whenever he has to run a blood test on any of them.

 

Once the vial is filled Chopper removes it and slides the needle out of Luffy's skin, pressing a cotton ball to it and then taping it down with medical tape. As if Luffy hasn't wandered around battles with blood pouring from every bit of his skin before and needs the slightest little scratch bandaged.

 

“It makes sense to test a small amount first.” Chopper nods, handing the little vial to Sanji.

 

The cook takes it in his hand and sniffs it. He barely needs to get close to it to do so, his senses seem on high alert and suddenly he feels far more hungry than he had before Usopp's blood. This time he can't smell any chemical tang at all. He lifts the vial and throws it back down his throat and regrets it IMMEDIATELY.

 

“SHIT!” Sanji swears, throwing the vial to the ground and sprinting to the edge of the ship to spit as much of Luffy's blood out of his mouth as he can.

 

“What?” Luffy asks, wide eyed.

 

“It BURNS!” Sanji yowls, his tongue feeling like it's smoking from being so abused. He feels lucky that none of it made it down into his stomach or else he'd no doubt be hurling up everything in his stomach.

 

“I can't... feel my tongue.” Sanji manages, sliding back down the railings of the ship and clutching at his mouth.

 

“Open up.” Zoro orders, rapping his knuckles on the side of Sanji's jaw. Wincing Sanji does so and watches as Zoro's eyes widen. Chopper scurries over and gets a similar look of alarm.

 

“He's... healing. But it looks like he was burnt!” Chopper gasps.

 

Sanji shuts his mouth and runs his tongue against his teeth, his tongue feels stiff and dry, like he's dehydrated or something. When Chopper makes him open his mouth again he gets a noise of wonder and an exclamation that he's completely better, or at least as good as he was beforehand.

 

“Why did my blood hurt Sanji? The other blood didn't.” Luffy asks looking upset. He flings himself at Sanji and wraps his stretchy arms around the cook, babbling apologies into his shirt.

 

“Chopper, who's blood was it that Sanji had first?” Nami asks curiously.

 

“It was Usopp's, but I don't see why it would be different.” Chopper answers in confusion.

 

“I might have an idea. If Sanji is a vampire, and I think it's pretty clear now that he is, then you could consider him a kind of demon or devil. Luffy has a devil's fruit power and you can only have one of those, or else they fight and kill you, right? So if Sanji drinks devil fruit user blood...” Nami trails off.

 

“It hurts him.” Zoro nods in recognition.

 

“So, if you want to test that theory you'd need to give Sanji blood from another non-devil's fruit user.” Robin hums in thought.

 

“Go on then.” Zoro sighs, holding out his arm to Chopper.

 

“Wait, what?” Sanji blinks, confusion clouding his head.

 

“Dumb ass, it has to be me.” Zoro says rolling his eyes at Sanji like he thinks that he's brain dead or something, he probably is he supposes.

 

“Why, what makes you so special?” Sanji challenges him.

 

“Fine, if you need it spelling out for you. Luffy, Robin and Chopper are out, they're devil's fruit users and Brook has no blood anyway. That leaves me, Franky, Usopp and Nami. Franky can't give blood to anyone because it's so full of metal, cola and shit that he can't even donate to me and we're the same blood type.” Zoro explains.

 

“Believe me, I've tried making it work.” Chopper agrees with a worn out sigh.

 

“Sorry bro, can't help the way I am.” Franky grins and gives Sanji a thumbs up for some reason.

 

“So then it's me, Nami and Usopp. You're not gonna drink from Nami because 'oh no I could never hurt my pretty flower, wah wah', 'cause you're a moron.” Zoro says, putting on a high falsetto and adopting an overemphasised version of Sanji’s body language. He’s not sure if it’s better or worse than Luffy and Usopp’s past attempts.

 

“I DON'T sound like that, shit face!” Sanji snarls and kicks Zoro in the side.

 

“Usopp is probably right now coming down with some kind of 'can't-donate-blood-disease'.” Zoro says, gesturing to the quivering sniper.

 

“It's true! It's very serious, a-and contagious! I would hate to make you sick Sanji. So, I would if I could but... eheheheh.” The long nose laughs nervously.

 

“So, it's me. We could have been done by now if I didn't have to explain this to your stupid ass.” Zoro says with a roll of his eyes.

 

“You could be nicer to me or I could rip out your throat with my new teeth you bastard.” Sanji snarls, baring his fangs to prove a point.

 

“I'm already giving you blood, that's pretty nice. But if you wanna fight me then let's go, I always felt that 'demon hunter' name of mine could use some actual demon hunting to back it up.” Zoro grins darkly with a particularly malevolent light shining in his eyes.

 

Before Sanji can respond or agree to Zoro's challenge a strong fist smacks him in the back of his head, when he comes up dazed he sees Zoro rubbing the back of his own head and Nami standing angrily between them.

 

“Will you two overgrown babies cut it out? We're trying to help Sanji out here! Chopper! Take Zoro's blood!” Nami yells at all of them.

 

Chopper scrambles into action and Zoro holds out his arm again. Sanji for his part just sits there sulking until there is a full vial of Zoro's blood in his hand. Again, the smell of the fresh blood is beyond enticing to him, wafting up to him like the smell of the first cup of coffee in the morning or fresh bread just out of the oven. He downs it in one go and instead of feeling searing pain in his mouth this time it's amazing.

 

Sanji finds it hard to describe how the fresh blood in his mouth feels, he's never felt anything completely like it. It feels hot and it warms him from the inside out, like warm mugs of mulled wine in winter. It's thick and warm like a shot of melted chocolate and runs down his throat like warm honey. The taste is something else entirely. He's tasted blood before of course, both his own and those of other people, the latter has rarely been deliberate of course. Blood usually tastes like pennies, a coppery tang that is far from pleasant. Blood does not taste like that now.

 

Right now it tastes... glorious. Though it's not taste he gets an impression of ocean spray, fresh autumn air and an undeniable tang of steel. Not things he's ever thought 'yum' about before but... it's almost like an essence of something. Of Zoro he supposes. Sanji is struggling to think of many things that he's tasted in his life that feel more satisfying and inherently pleasurable to have in his mouth than Zoro's blood is in this moment.

 

He manages to stop himself from sighing in pleasure, but only just.

 

“I think that's your answer Chopper.” Brook says with a laugh, snapping Sanji out of his blood haze.

 

“I-” Sanji scrambles, trying to cover himself. That was sick, he just drank Zoro's blood and loved it. He really is a monster.

 

“Chopper, are you gonna put that tube in my arm or what? Sanji's not had anything to eat this whole time, you don't want to make him sick, right?” Zoro prompts, holding out his arm.

 

“I can't get sick, I'm dead!” Sanji exclaims, not out of disagreement that Zoro should give him his blood, but more... well, out of the simple habit of disagreeing with Zoro. Before Zoro can reply though Brook leans down, bony fingers crossed over a bony chin that rests atop Sanji's head.

 

“Now you're getting the hang of the dead jokes.” Brook says with his trademark trill of laughter.

 

“I suppose.” Chopper says with an unhappy tilt to his mouth. Sanji feels a pang of guilt, draining blood from a patient for no medical reason and letting another drink something as inherently dangerous as blood must go against all of his medical training and instincts. It doesn't help that what Sanji is now is something entirely unnatural, he's creeping himself out, let alone everyone else.

 

Chopper attaches the IV tube to the needle that's still in Zoro's arm, unscrewing the plug that had kept the needle from drawing still more blood. Sanji watches as the plastic tube fills with rich dark blood, he's so keen for it that he can't even bring himself to be ashamed of how much his mouth is watering.

 

“Uh... This will go better if the end of the IV is below the needle and if Zoro's arm is below parallel.” Chopper says thoughtfully.

 

“What do you want him to do exactly, have his head in my lap?” Zoro snorts in disbelief.

 

“Actually that's a great idea! Come on Sanji!” Chopper beams at Zoro's suggestion.

 

“I wasn't-” Zoro frowns, trying to protest that he wasn't serious.

 

“Thanks a bunch for that idea moss brain.” Sanji grumbles, turning around on the floor and leaning back until his head rests on Zoro's thigh.

 

“At least you look stupider than I do.” Zoro says grudgingly.

 

“So you admit that you look stupid then.” Sanji grins toothily and waits to see how Zoro will get out of that one.

 

“Sanji, here.” Chopper says, cutting into their argument. Chopper holds out the tube full of blood that connects to Zoro's arm. As quickly as he can Sanji presses his thumb over the end of it as Chopper's hoof comes back, so that as little blood as possible is wasted. He tries to ignore the watchful stares of his nakama as he slides his end of the tube into his mouth and takes his thumb off of the end.

 

Instantly blood floods his mouth, returning that hot gorgeous feeling and that sense of Zoro to him. He lets it run over his tongue, hot and thick. He's fascinated with the way that it comes forth in gentle pulses, Zoro's heartbeat he realises.

 

“I can feel your heart.” Sanji murmurs around the tube in his mouth.

 

“Really, dumbass? Who'd have thought?” Zoro says flatly. Sanji decides that it isn't worth arguing back and risking not drinking every bit of blood that he can, he'd hate to lose some from a petty dispute. Thank goodness for crude hand gestures.

 

“Come on, this isn't a spectator sport. Luffy, weren't you going to show me this new game of yours?” Brook says loudly, standing up.

 

“Oh yeah! Come on Usopp, we gotta show him!” Luffy exclaims in excitement, bounding off away from Zoro and Sanji and dragging the sharpshooter off to places unknown in the ship. Brook pauses before following them, shooting Sanji a wink. A wave of gratitude rolls through the blonde, he feels freakish enough without having everyone gawking at him.

 

“I think we'll leave you two be, I've got some more research to do anyway.” Robin says, catching on and leading Nami and Franky away. Now it's just him, Zoro and Chopper. Obviously Chopper isn't going to go anywhere, not when medical equipment is involved. Or presumably in case Sanji flips out and decides to drain Zoro dry through what amounts to a curly straw, it’d would be the dumbest death for Zoro ever.

 

Zoro is frowning, trying to find somewhere to put his arm that doesn't risk dislodging the needle already in there. Eventually he settles on resting it on Sanji's throat, though he doesn't put it there too delicately and for once Sanji is glad that he's not breathing anymore, if he was then that would certainly have made him cough and splutter.

 

Sanji keeps swallowing down Zoro's blood with every other heartbeat. It's not that his stomach feels full because it doesn't, in truth the normal human stomach can hold quite a large volume of liquid. Goodness knows what Luffy's can do, he's a complete outlier from normality.

 

“Isn't this weird for you?” Sanji asks, his speech slightly distorted by the tube.

 

“Everything on this fucking ocean is weird, I stopped noticing a while back.” The swordsman says easily.

 

“But- but I'm dead and drinking your blood and- oh come on! This is fucking weird!” Sanji yells, stopping up the IV tube with his thumb so that he can sit up and shout at Zoro.

 

“You're not dead. Yesterday you were dead, you're talking and walking, you're still the dumbass shit cook you were. A heartbeat is kinda besides the point. Just keep drinking, alright?” the marimo argues back, shoving Sanji back down to where he was.

 

Sanji frowns but gives in, he lets Zoro's blood start flowing into his mouth again. He shifts against Zoro's leg and the ground below in an effort to get comfortable.

 

He can feel the heat coming off of Zoro, the whole heat of the process of life going on the other man. Blood flowing, nerves firing and muscles burning energy. Zoro is a nuclear reactor of life and Sanji feels like a pale imitation, but with Zoro's blood pulsing into his mouth and the warmth from his thigh seeping into Sanji's neck and head he's starting to feel a little more human.

 

“Why are you being so nice?” the cook asks in a small voice, not even daring to look up at the other man.

 

“I'm not being nice to you shit-cook? Who said I'm being nice? As if.” Zoro denies hotly, Sanji feels Zoro's leg tense under his head slightly.

 

“You are literally bleeding for me here, are you really gonna make that argument right now kelp-brain?” Sanji points out with a grin.

 

“Maybe I'm just doing this so that you can feel strong enough to give me a real fight. I wanna see what your dead ass can do.” Zoro sneers at him, the challenge evident.

 

“Oh, you're fucking ON. Let's go right now.” Sanji insists, stopping up the tube with his thumb and rolling so that he's on his knees.

 

“Hey wait! No fighting! Zoro's gonna be dizzy with blood loss and you really shouldn't be-” Chopper starts to protest, looking up at them with wide eyes.

 

“No way, I've fought having lost way more blood than this, that was nothing.” Zoro grins, pulling the needle out of his arm and dropping it on the floor.

 

“Really, the way you two behave it's a wonder you're not de- oh. Sorry Sanji I didn't mean, oh dear!” Chopper wails, realising his error.

 

“It's fine Chopper, if you wanna stick around and see a dead guy kick Zoro's ass then you're more than welcome.” Sanji grins, cracking his neck to the side.

 

“I'll pass, thanks. Call me if you need me.” Chopper grumbles, picking up his medical supplies and heading off, despairing at their habit of fighting.

 

Sanji swallows and runs his tongue around his mouth, chasing up any last traces of blood as he stretches ready for their fight. As he does so Zoro cracks his knuckles and draws his three swords, biting down on the one in his mouth with a twisted grin.

 

Zoro charges at him first, not a real attack or one with much intent. It's a test, to see if Sanji still has his speed. Thankfully he does so it's no problem at all to get his foot up in time to block. Now it's his turn to test. He shoves back with his foot and sends Zoro skidding away, well, dying didn't make him any weaker then.

 

With that done the two of them circle each other warily, watching each other's moves. Zoro is the one who goes on the offensive, swinging his blades in a fast and unpredictable pattern. Sanji whirls and blocks or dodges Zoro's moves, not keeping one step ahead of him but just reacting. He's physically as fast as he usually is but it feels like his brain isn't running at full speed, as if something is slowing his being down, even though his body itself it’s okay. Zoro is grinning around his sword like it's his birthday and he's just got the best present ever, he's winning.

 

Sanji mistimes a step and doesn't move quite right, everything falls out of synch and suddenly there's a stinging shock running through his system from his arm. He sees Zoro halt and Sanji does the same. He stares down at his arm, there's a cut along his bicep about ten centimetres wide. The skin has separated and the gash is open, the middle of it showing a least a centimetre of space between the two sides of the cut.

 

Sanji has sustained cuts, scratches and gouges before, it's to be expected when he fights with a swordsman as much as he does, but this is completely new. The cut is just... there, doing nothing. There's no blood coming from it, none at all.

 

“Well... that's a thing that's happened.” Sanji concludes numbly.

 

“That's fucking weird.” Zoro remarks, sheathing his blades and walking closer to get a look.

 

“I can still move everything, you didn't get a tendon or much muscle I don't think.” he says, moving his arm and hand this way and that.

 

“Of course I didn't, what kind of amateur do you think I am? If I wanted to kill you I'd have done it long ago.” the other man responds sharply. He's right in a way. The two of them don't hold back with each other, but equally if they see that one of them isn't going to be able to block a hit then both of them pull it back enough to stop real injury. Their speed and power remains the same and, as long as both of them are on their game, everything is as it would be in a real fight against an enemy. As much as the two want a real brawl it'd be dumb to injure each other too bad when the marines could pop up at any time.

 

“If you wanted to kill me now you'd be a little late.” Sanji jokes. Brook is right, it does kind of make it easier.

 

Zoro smacks him in the stomach and looks a little closer.

 

“I can see your muscle and it's got blood in it but it's way darker than it should be... there's no blood flow either. This is fucking odd.” Zoro says thoughtfully. He reaches out and pokes Sanji's cut, his finger touching Sanji's actual bicep.

 

“You fucking shit! Get your fingers out of me! Who DOES that? Don't just poke your grubby mitts inside my arm, that's gross!” Sanji yowls, pulling away from him and clutching at his arm.

 

“Eesh, don't get your panties in a twist, I was just looking.” Zoro snaps and wipes his slightly bloodstained finger on Sanji’s nice shirt, the bastard.

 

“Look with your eyes, not your hands, bastard!” he snarls, covering his arm protectively. He looks down at his arm and in a hopeless gesture he pinches the skin together, he's going to need stitches for sure. But as he pinches the two sides of the cut together there's suddenly a sick sound, like pulling apart two things with half dry glue on them. A kind of sticky, slimy sound. He lets go of his arm and watches in horror as the cut separates again, but this time there's red gunk pulling the sides together, stitching him up from the inside in slow motion.

 

“CHOPPER! YOU WANNA SEE THIS!” Zoro yells loudly.

 

Within seconds Chopper has scrambled to the scene on four legs in his full deer form, his medical bag held in his teeth. He jumps and pops back into his usual form, catching the bag as he does so.

 

The doctor stares wide eyed as Sanji arm sticks itself back together. Before it can finish though Chopper reaches out with a swab and swipes a little of the red.. whatever that is... and gets a sample. Within seconds from that the cut has stuck itself together and moments after that his skin shifts and heals, leaving him as pale and as effectively flawless as before.

 

“This is... very troubling.” Chopper remarks, looking at Sanji's arm and turning it this way and that as he pokes at the skin.

 

“No, that's very cool. Can I do it again?” Zoro asks, reaching for his swords.

 

“NO! What is wrong with you?” Sanji yells, waving his arms.

 

“Ugh, forget this, I'm gonna go hang out with Brook. We can be dead and weird together.” Sanji mutters, wandering off. He doesn't want to be Zoro's toy any more than he wants to be Chopper's test cadaver.

 

It takes some wandering to find Brook, but after ascertaining that he's not off playing with Luffy and Usopp anymore he quickly figures out where he might be. Sure enough he's down in the aquarium, sat at the piano, playing the keys softly and writing notes on a sheet of music that's half blank.

 

Sanji sits down on the stool next to him and deliberately sucks in a breath that he doesn't need and lets out out with a sigh. It's stupidly melodramatic but Brook doesn't call him on it.

 

“I hate being dead.” Sanji asserts unhappily.

 

“You'll get used to it.” Brook says easily with a subtle shrug of his shoulders.

 

“I feel like Chopper wants to cut me up and examine me rather than let me near the rest of the crew, he keeps looking at me like I'm dangerous.” Sanji complains. It really stings too, he loves his nakama and he'd never put them in danger or hurt them. Well, he hurts Zoro but Zoro likes it so that doesn't count.

 

“There's a chance that you are, not deliberately of course, but we're all pretty sure that it was biting that guy and being bitten by him that did this to you. He doesn't know how else it works and how he can protect people. It's not that he doesn't trust you.” Brook reassures him earnestly.

 

“I know, I just...” Sanji trails off and stares up at the wooden ceiling.

 

“I didn't ask for this, dying didn't hurt and coming back like this... everything just feels so wrong. I'm drinking blood for fuck's sake, I can't sleep, I've got no pulse and I'm not even breathing. Everything is wrong and part of me-” Sanji cuts himself off. He covers his eyes with his hands and leans against the top of the piano, his elbows just on the edge of the black lacquer surface. He opens his mouth and says something that until now he'd not even dared to voice in his own head.

 

“Part of me wishes I'd stayed dead. I know I'm selfish but-” Sanji can't even finish his statement, it's just too awful. He knows that if any one of his nakama died he'd be destroyed by it, it'd be unbearably painful and everyone is so glad to have him back. They thought they'd lost him and, like a prayer answered, he came back. He'd consider that a miracle if it happened to any of the rest of the crew, but to him it feels like a curse.

 

“When I ate my devil's fruit I knew what it did, I thought that I'd get a second chance and that if I died in a fight I could still come back and help my nakama.” He says, his voice soft and far away. Brook's fingers move over the keys in a soft way, bringing soft wavering notes to Sanji's ears.

 

“It didn't work out that way of course and what I came back to was nothing that I could have imagined. My life wasn't what I imagined it'd be at all and of course my body wasn't anywhere near the condition that yours is in.” The musician says, shooting Sanji a sideways look.

 

Sanji winces. Not only is his body more human than Brook's is right now, but he just healed from an injury, something that Brook can't really do. God he's an insensitive asshole.

 

“There were times, more than I can count actually, that I wished I'd never eaten that fruit, that I'd never come back.” Brook says, much to Sanji's surprise. His bone white fingers run along the keys of the piano, playing a soft and haunting tune, the right accompaniment to their conversation.

 

“But... if I hadn't then I never would have been on this crew with all of you. Even if inside you're the same person that you used to be... outside you're not. There's no running from that. I know everything seems wrong but it would be strange if it didn't, right?” Brook asks, turning to him with a smile.

 

“I'm sorry.” Sanji mumbles quietly, ashamed of his complaining and for Brook's own suffering.

 

“Don't be sorry Sanji, it just takes some getting used to. And you don't need to worry about hurting my heart, I don't have a heart, YOHOHOHOHOHOHOOO!” Brook laughs loudly.

 

“Thanks Brook.” Sanji says, resting his hands on either side of his legs on the piano stool. He runs his tongue on the sides of his sharp fangs. He's a predator, a monster that people tell scary stories about. Is he going to become that? Is he going to be as animalistic as the guy who bit him in the first place? Is he going to rip someone's throat out with his teeth? These are all things that he has to think about now that he never had to think about before. He swallows and a taste of steel runs over his tongue. There's still traces of Zoro's blood in his spit.

 

“So how long does it take to adjust to being dead? How long until it's not weird anymore? Until you don't feel wrong?” The blonde asks, looking up at his nakama.

 

“Hmm... so far... fifty years and counting. I'll let you know when it happens for me!” Brook says, laughing loudly. If it was possible for Sanji he'd go even paler at that.

 

“It doesn't ever stop?!” He gawps in horror.

 

“Mmm. Tell me something Sanji. What age were you when you figured your whole life out when you were alive? When you knew exactly who you were, everything about your mind, who or if you would marry, exactly what you wanted to do with your life? How old were you?” Brook asks curiously. Sanji opens his mouth to come up with a smart answer but nothing comes out.

 

“I don't know, I had some of that figured out like my dream. But... how am I supposed to know all of that other shit?” Sanji frowns. Sanji's actually pretty sure that most people don't figure all of that shit out in their lives, they just work it out as they go along. Brook says nothing and continues playing.

 

“Ohhh.” Sanji says, grasping Brook's point after a while. Grasping the point of life is no easier than getting used to death.

 

“I knew you'd get it.” Brook says with a laugh and plays a jaunty little tune on the piano to accompany his happy revelation.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Sanji stands in the middle of the kitchen with a fork frozen halfway to his lips. He’s making the crew a grilled chicken salad for dinner with a pepper and basil frittata on the side, you can never have too much food on the table with this crew around. He was just about to taste a sliver of the first chicken breast, just to make sure that it was good and that he didn’t need to go back to alter the glaze. He often makes his part of the meal first when it’s this kind of thing, that way if it needs tweaking he can go back and fix the mistake rather than subjecting his nakama to it.

 

Only now he can’t eat it.

 

He knows from experience that if he puts that chicken in his mouth and swallows it he’ll just throw it right back up, an inexcusable waste of food. He’s not made himself dinner at all, figuring that feeding off of Zoro was more than enough. Not that it seems he can eat food at all.

 

He leans against the counter and looks at the speared strip of chicken. Serving food without tasting it first is a capital offence amongst chefs, so he can’t do that either. He weighs up the two contradicting points. Not tasting the balance of a meal and making sure that his nakama are properly fed and satisfied is more important to his job than wasting food. It’s not as if he’s eating an entire meal after all. Their food costs will certainly go down with one less mouth to feed, though if Zoro’s going to be his only source of food then he may need to feed him twice as much.

 

He doesn’t want to throw up, so he can’t swallow it but he can still taste it. Sanji puts the chicken in his mouth and chews. The texture is fine, he cut with the direction of the meat so that it isn’t chewy and he’s cooked it just the right amount. The glaze is perfect too, just the right amount of jerk spice in it to be appealing.

 

Sanji halts himself, reflexes on the verge of swallowing his food. He grits his teeth, his long canines digging into the inside of his lip ever so slightly, and walks over to the trashcan. He leans over it and spits his mouthful out, years of training inside his head screaming at him. If he had swallowed it and made himself sick then it would have taken him away from his cooking, taken him away from his job and helping his nakama.

 

Just as he’s spitting out the last of the chicken from his mouth Zoro and Usopp walk into the kitchen.

 

“…what?” Zoro frowns, looking at him in utter bewilderment.

 

“Did Sanji just waste food by spitting it out?” Usopp exclaims.

 

“Don’t fucking remind me, I can’t eat but I’ve still gotta taste it don’t I?” Sanji mutters unhappily, striding back to the grill and looking at the chicken.

 

“Whoa, that must really mess with your head! A cook that can’t eat, that’s pretty funny when you think about it.” Usopp says.

 

Sanji feels it before he hears it, a low rumbling feeling deep in the bottom of his lungs if not lower, coming from the very core of him. A sub-sonic growl that builds into audible range as he stands up and turns around. He doesn’t mean to do it but he feels his top lip peel back into a snarl, showing every new pointed and threatening tooth.

 

“FUNNY?” He snaps, the growl continuing and moving around the room like an echo chamber of rage.

 

Usopp goes as white as a fucking sheet and damn near pisses himself on the spot. Sanji can almost see the fear radiating off of him, thick and terrified waves rolling across the room.

 

“I’msorryIdidn’tmeanit!” Usopp squeaks out and bolts from the room, not even closing the door properly in his haste. The wood bounces in the frame and squeaks open again.

 

Zoro is looking at him wide eyed, his hand on the hilt of his swords. That cuts the growl dead in his chest. He does not want Zoro or the others to see him as a threat. As soon as the vibration in his chest stops Zoro relaxes, shaking his head and dropping his hand. He seems to shudder and come back to himself, Sanji can’t help but notice that even Zoro is a little paler.

 

“What the fuck was that? It felt like ice and spiders down the back of my shirt, you sounded like… some kind of big cat or a wolf or something.” Zoro says with wide eyed interest. Not fear, not hostility but just curiosity.

 

“Or something sounds more accurate. I didn’t even mean to.” Sanji mumbles, looking regretfully at the door. He should go apologise to Usopp, he doesn’t want his nakama to be afraid of him, even though he deserved shouting at for that insensitive comment.

 

It’s not like Usopp even meant it. The shitty sharpshooter makes jokes when he’s nervous or when he doesn’t know what to say, it’s either that or lying. It’s just a reflex for him. He’d never say something so hurtful seriously and Sanji would bet his last beli that Usopp is cursing himself right now for what he said.

 

“I can’t wrap my mind around not eating, but I don’t want to ruin dinner and I don’t want to hurl. It’s the only way.” Sanji says, looking down at his clenched hands on the countertop and forcing them to uncurl and relax.

 

“Who’re you trying to convince here love-cook? You or me?” Zoro snorts, moving into the kitchen and towards the fridge. Zoro pulls out a beer which has Sanji raising an eyebrow. It’s not often that Zoro drinks beer on a day to day basis. He’ll drink it at parties if that’s what’s on offer and he seems to like it well enough, but when Zoro’s drinking alone for pleasure then he prefers stronger stuff like spirits or sake. Then again it’s a pretty warm day outside and an icy beer might be what he needs to cool down and relax. Sanji’s stomach sinks, he’s never going to be able to drink alcohol again, not if the way his stomach churned when he drank water is any indication.

 

“Oi, drink some water first, you’re gonna be dehydrated after…” Sanji trails off. After he took loads of blood out of Zoro to eat, after he drained him, after he ate him.

 

“I’m drinking beer, that’s a liquid, stop bitching at me.” Zoro bites back, unaware of Sanji’s internal torment.

 

“Beer dehydrates you, drink water first and stop arguing with me!” Sanji snaps, filling a glass for him and shoving Zoro and his two drinks out of the kitchen, kicking the door shut after him.

 

“UGH.” Sanji groans, rubbing his hands through his hair. He stomps back to the grill and looks at the chicken again. It doesn’t need anything else doing to it, the taste was spot on. It just needs to keep warm whilst he quickly whips up the frittata.

 

The sizzling mix smells just perfect and the scent of perfectly glazed chicken hangs in the air like the sweetest perfume. Sanji isn’t interested in any of it. He can describe the smells in the room and picks out herbs and spices, he knows how they blend together and he knows that it smells good. It all registers in his system but it provokes no reaction in him. He’s not excited about it, he doesn’t want to eat it, it doesn’t make him hungry or his mouth water. It’s as abstract to him as the colour of the grass outside. He can talk all about it but he doesn’t especially care. It is weird and unsettling. Can he even call himself a cook if he feels like this?

 

Shit, he needs to stop being so self-centred and do his goddamn job. He settles the salad on each person’s plate and places the chicken neatly on each of them, adding garnish to the sides. He pauses and retrieves some kale from the fridge, washing and spinning it quickly before adding it to Zoro’s salad, the marimo needs the iron now more than ever.

 

He serves up slices of frittata and sets the rest of the large dish of it in the middle of the table before rethinking it and sliding it slightly further along the table away from Luffy’s place. He changes his mind and moves it back, it’s hopeless trying to put anything out of Luffy’s extendable reach. He dots baskets of bread around the table along with water jugs and bottles of wine. He leaves a water jug right next to Zoro’s space at the table as a passive aggressive gesture reminding him to drink like he should.

 

With all of that done he opens the door again and yells for his nakama to come in. He steps outside and watches them all stampede to the door but catches Usopp and holds him back before he can go in.

 

Sanji’s unbeating heart breaks a little when he sees that there’s a note of fear in Usopp’s eyes. Sanji lets his arm go and sighs, forcing the air in and out for effect.

 

“I’m sorry that I scared you earlier, I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not dangerous, honest. Don’t be scared of me… please?” Sanji says pleadingly. He can’t think of many things worse than this. Nakama are supposed to trust each other with their lives. If Usopp doesn’t trust him not to rip his jugular out with his teeth then Sanji has utterly failed at being a good nakama.

 

Usopp’s mouth pinches down at the corners and he can’t quite look at Sanji. The cook’s shoulders drop, he’s ruined this with the sharpshooter.

 

“It was a jerky thing of me to say, I didn’t mean it.” Usopp says quietly, rubbing his left arm with his hand as if he was cold or something. Does Sanji give him the chills?

 

“I know, it just stung was all. I didn’t mean to do whatever the fuck that was, growl or something. I think it’s some supernatural bullshit because even Zoro freaked out a little.” Sanji says in irritation. This whole undead thing doesn’t exactly come with a manual and he could really use one right about now.

 

“Really? Zoro got scared too? It wasn’t just me?” The sharpshooter gasps, looking up with wide eyes.

 

“Yeah, the shitty bastard said it felt like ice and spiders down his back.” Sanji grins. Usopp visibly relaxes and beams happily.

 

“I thought it was just me being a coward.” The other guy says with a sheepish kind of shrug, ducking his head to hide his blush.

 

“Nah, to be honest I scare myself right now. But I’d never hurt any of you. Well… maybe Zoro, but no more than before and he just asks for it.” Sanji says thoughtfully. He really does need to have a rematch with Zoro sometime, as soon as he can clear that weird fog out of his head.

 

“Anyway, go on in and eat.” Sanji says with a smile, trying to keep his fangs hidden as he does it.

 

“You’re not coming in to ea- why did I start this sentence I’m gonna go now.” Usopp babbles and darts into the kitchen, red faced and not able to look Sanji in the eye. The cook’s laughter follows him in as he shuts the door. Brook is right, laughing at things sometimes makes it easier. All the same he doesn’t want to sit in there and watch his nakama eat without him, that’d just be too strange and too painful.

 

Instead Sanji just takes the opportunity of a moment of peace and walks to the lion head of the ship. As Luffy is inside stuffing his face Sanji has an unusual chance to be the one that sits on the Sunny’s lion head. He settles down with his legs crossed and stares out into the open ocean. Without the sound of his own breathing and his heartbeat in his ears everything else sounds so much clearer. He can hear the sound of the waves as they break against the ship, the wind rustling through the grass and the leaves of Nami’s mikan trees. He can hear the sound of his nakama, muffled by wood and glass as they eat and laugh together.

 

Sanji tilts his face up to the sky with his eyes shut and feels the sun warm his skin. Aren’t vampires supposed to burn up in the sun? But then again they’d met zombies that didn’t eat brains and he lived with a skeleton that was alive. The Grand Line was a strange place indeed.

 

He wonders how returning to Zeff will be. He knows that he’ll see him again at some point, he’ll have to after he finds All Blue. He wants to let him know it’s real. But it’ll be a hard conversation. “Hey Zeff, I’ve got good news and bad news. Good news, I found All Blue. Bad news, I’m technically dead.”

 

No way can he say that, he’ll give his old man a heart attack. Hm.

 

“Hey old man, I said I’d find All Blue or die trying, turns out I did both! Ahahahahaaaaa…” No.

 

Good thing he’ll have a long time to plan that conversation.

 

He drops the thought with a shake of his head and instead deliberately breathes in through his nose, focusing on the smells around him just like he had in the kitchen. It was an effort to remember to breathe so he was really only doing it if he wanted to smell something or if he was about to speak. As he breathes in he smells about a thousand different things. He smells the salt from the sea, the ozone smell of the ocean, the scent of the grass from the deck. He can smell… not sunshine exactly, but that smell when everything is warm and pleasant at the end of the day. He can smell the soft pine like smell of the Adam wood of the ship and the little touches of paint here and there. He smells the way the ropes are damp and some of them have a little bit of algae in them.

 

His eyes opens and he frowns, he’s never smelt these things all at once before. Hell, he stopped smelling the Adam wood everywhere after a week or two of the ship being made. He could usually smell it in the bathroom after a hot steamy bath or shower when the wood was expanding and contracting from the temperature. But right here he’s just sitting outside.

 

Sanji glances up at the nearest rope that is part of the rigging to the nearest mast, he squints his eyes and sure enough there are little traces of green in the fibers of the rope. He’d never noticed it before, but somehow he can smell it.

  
“Shitty supernatural bullshit.” Sanji grumbles to himself, flopping back on the lion’s head in defeat. 


	5. Chapter 5

Sanji pulls his shirt out of his wardrobe and slides his arms into the sleeves of his shirt and buttons it up, looking at his pale reflection in the mirror. Weren't vampires supposed to not have reflections? He thinks that he'd prefer that right now. He does the last of his buttons up and fusses with his hair a little. He grimaces at it in disgust and shuts it. He's rather not see himself right now. He supposes that he'll adjust to it eventually but it'll probably be a long time coming. He shrugs his way into his soft grey waistcoat and turns in a different direction from his locker with his back to the door to do the buttons up, not that he could see his mirror right now even if he was looking that way.

 

He hears heavy boot steps right behind him. Sanji turns around, expecting Zoro to be right there but it's a good few moments before Zoro actually comes into the room with his boots sounding so loud that he may as well be jumping for the volume.

 

“Hey, what're you doing?” Zoro asks, wandering up to him.

 

“Getting dressed, what are you, blind?” Sanji frowns, gesturing to his shoes and sock less feet.

 

“Eh.” Zoro shrugs, seemingly not caring.

 

“Are you hungry?” the swordsman asks idly.

 

“Wh-why would you ask that? Do I look worse than usual? Do I look hungry?” Sanji panics, opening the locker door again and staring at his reflection. He's still pale as anything but he doesn't look especially monstrous.

 

“Don't flip your shit, shit cook. I was just asking.” Zoro sighs in exasperation.

 

“Oh, ok.” Sanji frowns. He concentrates on his stomach. He doesn't feel hunger really any more, it just seems like whenever he's due to eat... drink? Whatever. He just feels tired and kind of weak. He supposes that he feels a little bit that way, but not enough for him to want to drain Zoro. He's worried enough about how much blood he's taking.

 

“I shouldn't. Plus we don't have any of Chopper's stuff here right now, we can't.” Sanji mutters, looking off to the side. He's tempted and a large part of him wants to. He swallows thickly as the memory of Zoro's blood running down his throat viscerally floods his mind. His mouth is watering.

 

“So? If you're hungry just bite me.” Zoro shrugs.

 

Sanji's mind lights up at that. Some primal part of his new brain shuddering in pleasure at the thought of getting close, feeling Zoro's pulse and sinking his teeth- NO! Sanji winces and recoils from the idea. He doesn't want to be any more of a monster than he already is!

 

“What if I turned you into a monster like me? I'm not risking that.” Sanji answers after too long a pause.

 

“You're not a monster. Anyway, shouldn't it be my decision on whether or not you bite me?” Zoro argues.

 

“Since I'm the one doing the biting, no! Maybe your argument would be a little more convincing if I wasn't dead and biting you might kill you.” Sanji snarls and he really snarls this time. Just like he did in the kitchen before it's a sound that comes from deep inside of him. The moment that he feels it though he gasps and claps his hand over his mouth, the noise cutting short. Tears prick the back of his eyes but he ignores them, he won't cry.

 

“I have to go.” Sanji says quickly and quietly, slipping past Zoro as fast as he can and ignoring Zoro calling his name after him.

  
  


Sanji eats probably a little less than he should, which is something that he never thought that he would be able to say about himself. But luckily for him he's freshly fed when they land on the next island, something that he suspects was not innocent timing. He's pretty sure that the rest of the crew are trying to look after him better than he is doing himself. He doesn't want to say it out loud but it kind of bothers him how little having someone drink his blood bothers Zoro. The guy just sits there either in calm silence, seemingly enjoying the view, the sun on his face or the wind or else he's talking to Sanji and needling him as usual. Sanji's pretty sure that Zoro would kick up more of a fuss if he was doing something more benign like trying to give him a haircut!

 

His feet land on solid ground, more specifically the wooden boards of the island's dock. He experiences that odd sensation that he always does of being on solid ground again. He's spent most of his life at sea and where some people find that they have to adjust to being on a ship and moving with the waves he finds it disconcerting to be on flat ground that doesn't move.

 

The island seems to be a sandy summer island, so Chopper has secreted himself away below deck in the aquarium room with a lot of cool treats that Sanji has left prepared for him in the freezer. The poor little guy really can't stand the heat. With Franky guarding the ship the rest of them have time to explore the island.

 

The island reminds Sanji of Alabaster, in more than one way. The weather is very similar for one, but also the size of the place. From the size of the dock they can tell that it's a sizable city nearby but Nami is uneasy about the whole thing.

 

“There aren't any other pirate ships here at all, I don't see any navy ships either but...” Nami mutters quietly, looking around as the rest of the crew stands at the beginning of the dock, just by the gangplank up to the Sunny.

 

“Those boxes over there, look.” Usopp says, handing a small telescope off to Nami and pointing to a stall at the end of the peer that seems to handle shipping.

 

“That's a Navy brand on it, whether they're here or not now there's a possibility that this place is in high contact with the Navy and they might call them on us.” Nami says unhappily, folding the telescope back down and handing it back to the sharpshooter.

 

“Well what're you gonna do? Hide the ship?” Zoro asks with a frown.

 

“That's exactly what we're going to do. You and Sanji go scout about discreetly, along with Usopp and Robin. Split up into teams of two and see what you can find. I saw a place to the east of the island away from sight where we can moor up and use the Mini Merry to get to shore. I trust that you can both find east as long as you don't get separated from Sanji, right Zoro?” Nami orders, looking to all of them.

 

“Of course Nami! I'll keep the idiot in check!” Sanji says with a dramatic swoon to the side. Zoro absolutely fails to catch him, going so far as to take a step back so that Sanji lands on the dock with a loud thud.

 

“Meet us on the east of the island in two days, ok?” Nami orders them sharply.

 

“Got it Nami~swan! I'll stop the idiot from causing trouble!” Sanji salutes sharply from the ground.

 

“I don't like what you're implying shitty cook.” Zoro grumbles as Nami hauls their unhappy captain back on board as he, in a now mildly concussed fashion, complains that he wants to explore the island first.

 

“I don't think that Sanji was implying anything bad about you Zoro. He pretty much just said it outright.” Usopp interjects.

 

“That's quite right Usopp, Sanji's not known for his subtlety.” Robin says with a soft laugh behind her hand.

 

“Anyway, I don't care if you 'like' it or not. I don't like your hideous outfit, but you don't hear me complaining.” Sanji points out, looking disgustedly at Zoro's clothes. He's wearing the same thing that he did back on Alabaster, that hideous zebra print cotton coat and the awfully clashing peach colored headdress. Sure it keeps the heat off but it makes Sanji frankly ashamed to be seen with him.

 

“...You bought these!” Zoro points out after a few moments of looking down at his clothes.

 

“Yes, so you’d look awful because I hate you. But now I have to keep being seen with you like that!” Sanji snaps.

 

“Guess that backfired on you then didn’t it?” Zoro smirks smugly in a way that promises he’ll wear the hideous things more often just to spite him.

 

All of the rest of them are wearing the same clothes that they did on that desert island, all save for Sanji. He hadn't even noticed that they were pulling up to a summer island until everyone started complaining of the heat. He's perfectly fine wearing ordinary clothes.

 

Sanji watches as the anchors raise on the Sunny and the ship pulls slowly back out of the dock and back towards the open sea. One of his fangs worries at his lip, Nami isn't the only one to get a bad feeling about this place.

 

“I propose that Usopp and I scout the territory around the city, go through the suburbs and spy for information. You do the same in the city and lie low, try to find a place where the whole crew can hide out if we need it.” Robin muses, tapping her chin with a long and deadly finger.

 

“Yeah, knowing a safe base ahead of time could be really useful.” Usopp agrees with a nod. Sanji rolls his eyes, Usopp just wants somewhere to cower if things get a little bit hairy at all.

 

“Why are you two the ones coming up with the plans?” Zoro questions with a frown. They all know why Luffy isn't allowed to make plans if they can help it. The man's a great captain but possibly the worst strategist alive.

 

“Remember that one time when your plan involved you cutting off your own feet?” Usopp says flatly. Sanji snorts and doubles over with laughter, sucking in breaths out of reflex just because he can't not express that level of hilarity.

 

“That was ONE TIME and everyone got out okay!” Zoro protests. Usopp and Robin do not look convinced at all. Sanji finally manages to get his laughter under control and stands back up straight with the occasional giggle sneaking out.

 

“Oh boy, it's too bad that Chopper just left.” Sanji snickers. Zoro turns and looks at Sanji with a suspicious glare.

 

“Why?” the swordsman asks darkly.

 

“'cause he could have helped you with that burn Usopp just gave you.” Sanji laughs and easily dodges the punch that Zoro flings at his face.

 

“Well, as much as I always enjoy watching you two brawl, Usopp and I have some subtle observation to do.” Robin smiles deviously and walks away with the sharpshooter in tow.

 

“I can't believe that I'm stuck with you.” Zoro grumbles angrily as he stomps his way up the pier and towards the city.

 

“Story of my life... and my afterlife.” Sanji agrees and follows him.

 

The city itself is pretty new and metropolitan, it's technology is more advanced than it seemed to be in Vivi's homeland but he supposes that not having your country controlled by a warlord instigating a civil war will do that for a culture. The place seems pretty peaceful and he and Zoro manage a comfortable silence free of arguments by pretending that the other isn't there.

 

“There are some pretty good market stalls here. I'd like to come back after the crew has landed again.” Sanji muses, looking about at the stalls. There's some gorgeous looking fresh vegetables, their skin all shining in the sun. Visions of salads and quiches dance behind his eyes, recipes that he can do fluttering through his mind like butterflies.

 

He's interrupted though when he sees Zoro open his mouth to say something and then quickly shut it, glancing away uncomfortably.

 

“What? What was that?” Sanji asks with a frown and stops walking.

 

“What was what?” Zoro replies quickly, not quite looking at Sanji.

 

“That! You're doing it now. You were going to say something and you didn't and you're thinking something and you're not saying it. You never do that. Spit it out if you've got something to say, you bastard!” Sanji yells, attracting more than a few stares.

 

“Shh!” Zoro hisses, grabbing Sanji by the collar and hauling him into an alleyway.

 

“It's just... when you drag me around on your fucking boring as shit shopping trips-”

 

“You're not helping yourself Zoro.” Sanji interrupts with a scowl.

 

“Shut it. You usually taste the food before you buy it, the non meat things anyway. I can't see you spitting it out in front of the merchants, or rushing off to hurl either. But I didn't want to say anything because it seemed like a really fucking awful thing to say!” Zoro snaps at him angrily.

 

Sanji opens his mouth to reply with something scathing but the idea sinks in. Something that he's so used to doing, a habit to ensure that his crew gets the very best... he can't do it anymore. Sanji feels his unbeating heart sink.

 

“See?” Zoro points out. He doesn't look smug about it either, just regretful.

 

“Since when have you ever cared about not being a dick to me?” Sanji barks out, needing to say something, anything. He regrets saying it the moment the words have left his mouth. He and Zoro fight all the time, physically and verbally, but neither of them ever goes for the kill, but what he just said there was too close. That was an accusation that Zoro doesn't abide by those rules, and that accusation itself broke the rules. He sees Zoro's eyes widen in shock and then darken as he scowls and storms out of the alleyway.

 

“I didn't- Zoro! Come back!” Sanji calls out after him and dashes back out into the open. Sanji can't help but notice a group of young men standing together watching him and Zoro and muttering to each other, their fight clearly attracting too much attention.

 

Sanji swears under his breath and sprints to catch up with Zoro. The swordsman is walking stiffly and not looking at Sanji, so the cook has to actually grab him to get him to listen.

 

“Hey, can we just... pretend like that whole conversation didn't happen?” He asks quickly.

 

“You're an asshole.” Zoro states, not looking over.

 

“Yeah.” Sanji admits unhappily. He hears the resigned sigh come out of Zoro's nose and Sanji doesn't have to hear an acceptance from Zoro to know that it's dealt with. Zoro doesn't do grudges or quiet resentment, if Zoro has a problem with you then you know it.

 

They leave the market together, the staring men long forgotten and long since past. The two of them check out hotels and inns, sussing out exactly where seems like a safe place and where doesn't. They work out which has good escape routes and where the staff seem the least interested in their guests. Soon enough they’ve picked their place and the pair of them find themselves wandering aimlessly about the city. It’s only when Sanji hears Zoro’s stomach growl loudly that he realizes that they’ve not stopped to eat or drink once since they’ve been on the island.

 

“You need to eat, come on, I’ll find you somewhere good.” Sanji insists, dragging Zoro back into the right area of the city by his sleeve.

 

Before too long he finds a good entertainment part of the city, bars and restaurants all around. There are other shops and buildings too, but Sanji isn’t interested in them at all. He flits from menu to menu posted outside of each place. He weighs up price, quantity and nutrition of the food of each, revisiting some a few times.

 

He’s just decided on a place, a nice pasta joint that does good salads too, but when he turns around to tell Zoro that he’s done searching he finds no marimo in sight. Sanji strains his neck and searches the immediate area to see if the swordsman is simply obscured by the people around him, but no, he’s not.

 

“I take my eyes off of you for one shitty minute and you go and vanish on me.” Sanji mutters angrily under his breath.

 

He maps a spiral search pattern, spreading out from where he is now and covering all of the directions around himself so that if Zoro is nearby he’ll find him. It only takes him about ten minutes to find his lost, dumb and careless nakama. When he sees Zoro the man is grinning like a hyena and Zoro sidles up to Sanji with no word of protest about how he got lost.

 

“So, where’s food then?” Zoro asks with a smile. Sanji narrows his eyes in suspicion.

 

“It’s this way, what are you looking so happy about?” Sanji demands as he leads Zoro in the right direction. In a straight line it’s pretty quick getting to the pasta place and Zoro just grins and says that he’ll tell him when they’re sat down.

 

Sanji orders for Zoro. It’s not unusual for him to do so if they’re ever eating out, he’ll try and pick what people eat or at least give them a few acceptable choices. The whole crew trusts his judgment of course and he’s never led them wrong.

 

“And for you, sir?” The waiter asks, looking at him.

 

Sanji’s jaw seems to jam up as he sits there with his mouth open, trying to come up with an excuse to be there and not eat. The thought that the waiter can see his fangs makes him snap his mouth shut self-consciously.

 

“He ate earlier, he gets bad reactions to lots of food.” Zoro lies smoothly. Sanji stares at Zoro for a moment before nodding agreeably at the waiter who gives him an almost pitying look. The waiter brings water to their table and then goes away for good. Sanji sighs and feels awful. It had always felt like an insult when anyone at the Baratie didn’t eat, if they were allergic or not. He was always confident that he could make something that would cause them to not have a reaction and a refusal felt like a lack of trust. He wonders if anyone who’d ever refused him was in his position too.

 

“I got you something.” Zoro says, breaking Sanji’s train of thought.

 

Sanji looks at Zoro. The swordsman is leaning with his elbows against the table, his awful outfit of the headdress and outside coat discarded to the back of his chair. He’s now just wearing his usual fashion oblivious faded white shirt with the ugly old haramaki. The man is leaning forwards on the table, his elbows resting on the table in a sadly unsurprising lack of table manners. His chin is resting on his fist and that smug smirk is back on his face.

 

“What.” Sanji says flatly. He dreads to think what Zoro ‘got’ him.

 

The swordsman reaches behind him and drags something out of the back of his awful waistband, making Sanji’s nose wrinkle.

 

“I don’t want anything that you’ve had shoved up against your gross sweaty back for god knows how long!” Sanji hisses, trying to keep his voice down so that the other diners don’t hear him.

 

“Oh, so you don’t want this?” Zoro asks teasingly as he holds up a book in front of Sanji.

 

Sanji glares at Zoro and then looks at the cover of the book. It’s an unassuming brown colour with the words ‘Sailors Legends and Truths’ set in faded black type. In the middle of the book cover is a rather shoddy drawing of a ship on the sea with a lot of ominous clouds around it. All in all it looks like an old crappy book.

 

“What kind of crap present is this? Why did you pick this ratty old thing up for me anyway and since when do you do shit like that? Is this some kind of practical joke?” Sanji demands, snatching it from Zoro’s hands. Zoro just sits there silently smirking at him, like he’s just waiting for the penny to drop.

 

Sanji tries to stare him down but Zoro isn’t breaking so the cook eventually gives up and looks at the book in his hands a little more closely. It’s a paperback too, the corners are all ratty and torn. His mouth pulls down at the edges and he bends the book and lets the pages fan from one side to the other, but nothing falls out from inside the book.

 

He opens the book at random and idly flicks through pages talking about giants and other bullshit that they already know about, or else that they know to be false. Big chunks of the book seem to be unrelated to each other though, it’s clearly awfully written. Sanji wonders if Zoro just bought it to keep him occupied whilst he was eating, something to take his mind off of the fact that he’d be eating and Sanji wouldn’t. That explanation doesn’t feel right though. If Zoro really wanted to distract him then he’d just argue with him. It’d work better and it’s free.

 

He looks up when he sees that Zoro’s food has arrived, it all looks so nice and yet… he’s disinterested in it. He doesn’t care how it tastes, he doesn’t want to eat it, but watching Zoro eat it gives him a warm glow inside. It doesn’t matter what he wants as long as his nakama are okay.

 

“You’re supposed to start books at the beginning or are you too dumb to know that?” Zoro says around a mouthful of pasta, making Sanji shudder at his bad manners. He averts his eyes and opens the book at the beginning. After a few pages of useless shit like copyright and dedications he comes to the table of contents.

 

  1.  Mermaids  and sirens – the same or different?- p.3

  2.  The giants of Elbaf-p. 26

  3.  Jaya the myth-p.38

  4.  All Blue – the wandering ocean-p.52




Sanji stops reading right there because HOLY SHIT ALL BLUE! He flicks rapidly to page fifty two, nearly missing it in his excitement.

 

The book covers lots of the stories about All Blue that Sanji has already heard of, myths about how it looks, what’s in it, how it’s never been found in known memory. It has new information though, it suggests that All Blue is not in one place at all. As it’s made of a convergence of all of the oceans in the world its location changes based on the currents and weather in those areas.

 

All Blue as an entity remains though because the fish within it can’t survive outside of the merged seas, the salinity and temperature of the prevalent ocean area being inhospitable to all of the fish that didn’t come from there in the first place. The book also suggests that there are unique species in All Blue that exist nowhere else, fish adapted to survive in just that place and nowhere else. There are several detailed illustrations of fish that Sanji has never seen or heard of in his life, accounts of them washing up dead ashore on various islands in or near the Grand Line.

 

The book confirms that whilst All Blue travels it is always in the Grand line, the calm belt restricting its movement outwards. It theorizes that through advanced meteorology one could predict exactly where All Blue could be found at any given moment. The book breaks out lots of complicated terminology that Sanji doesn’t understand, things to do with subduction, salinity, prevailing winds, storm fronts and so on.

 

Sanji looks up at Zoro with wide shocked eyes. He must have been reading in complete absorption the whole time because there are two empty plates before Zoro and the swordsman is just picking at what remains of the salad that Sanji ordered for him. The swordsman notices his gaze and smiles in satisfaction.

 

“Thought you might like that, cook. The book has a lot of bullshit in it but if anyone stands a chance of working out where your ocean is from that sciencey mumbo jumbo-” Zoro says happily.

 

“Nami can… Nami could… she could do this.” Sanji breathes in awe. His hands are shaking. This could be his map, the way to All Blue and his dream.

 

“How did you even find this?” Sanji asks, clutching the book to his chest. The odds of finding a book with what are potentially directions to All Blue in it are astronomical.

 

“I just got lost and wound up in a book shop. I figured that I’d look around and it just caught my eye.” Zoro shrugs as if he’s not just done something so improbable that Sanji couldn’t have found it in a lifetime of searching. He has half a mind to not give the book to Nami and just let Zoro steer the ship for a month, they’ll probably bend space and time and wind up hopping right to Raftel with a quick stop to All Blue on the way. Either that or a gruesome death. One or the other.

 

Sanji hears a sudden increase in footsteps, scuffling of boots and whispering. His head snaps around but he can’t see anyone, though it sounded like they were almost on top of him when he heard them a moment ago. He hears the subtle sound of Zoro’s hand going to his swords, whether Zoro heard what he did or not he doesn’t know, but Zoro has a radar for trouble that is easily as good as Sanji’s own is.

 

Sanji stuffs the book inside his grey waistcoat and slaps the right amount of bills on the table, including a sizeable tip. He fiddles with the book a few times, making sure that it’s secure in his pocket.

 

“We should go.” He says quietly to Zoro. The swordsman nods and stands up, his hands still on his swords. Sanji’s head snaps the other way when he hears more footsteps coming around the other side of the building.

 

“Through the kitchen.” Sanji says, dashing in that direction.

 

They’re just at the doors when a bunch of civilians and a fair number of marines with hastily assembled outfits burst into both the entrance and the side exit to the establishment. Sanji was right, they were being surrounded and it looks like there were a few off duty Marines on the island to warrant the locals ratting them out. He can’t help but remember the stares that they attracted earlier in the day from their argument and wonders if it was them.

 

“Get out!” Sanji yells as he bursts into the kitchen through the swinging double doors.

 

The chefs and cooks look up at him in alarm and then all at once with malice. Sanji has never seen this kitchen before but all kitchens are run on the same spirit and he is not welcome here.

 

“I’m Sanji, pirate cook of the seas. The Marines are going to burst in here any second looking for us, grab anything valuable and get the hell out of here, they won’t hesitate to trash anything that they see, they don’t understand chefs like us.” Sanji shouts to them.

 

“Sanji, this isn’t going to-” Zoro protests, but as one the staff all grab expensive knives, valuable cooking equipment and hold as much as they can. Burners are turned off and the staff all clear out at once, a swift and organized movement.

 

“Chefs look out for each other. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here, I don’t want to fight in a place like-” Sanji says but is cut off from speaking when a flood of men burst in through the exit to the kitchen that the chefs and cooks all just left through. A regular man might have suspected that the chefs tipped the marines off to their location and the marines let them go, but Sanji knows that no one gets in the way of any kind of chef when they are trying to protect what matters in their kitchen.

 

Zoro draws his swords and a new bunch of marines and armed civilians break in through the door that Sanji and Zoro had entered by. Sanji stands back to back with Zoro, the two of them sizing up their options.

 

“Hold the kitchen?” Zoro suggests.

 

“Hold the kitchen, I could murder every one of these men here with anything in this room.” Sanji agrees. Picking a fight with a cook in a kitchen was the dumbest fucking thing in the world.

 

The narrow aisles in between workstations only serve to limit the marines and warring civilians ability to rush him. They can only come at him two at a time, or three if they're going to be stupid and cram in to attack him, which some of them do.

 

The first guys to come at him come in a pair, side by side. Sanji plants his hands on the steel worktops and anchors his weight, kicking and hearing their jaws snap and a sick crack as their heads connect to each other. He hadn't meant to hit them that hard, is he that out of control? Sanji scissor kicks the next guy and sends his gun pinwheeling through the air across the room, it thankfully doesn't go off when it lands, a stray bullet ricocheting around here is the last thing that they need.

 

Sanji spins and ducks a sword, grabbing the long flexible pipe of the sink faucet and spraying water across the floor before mule kicking the guy in front, sending him sliding back and all over the men behind him. Sanji vaults into the next set of stations, snatches up a small blowtorch that was near a set of small ramekins with unfinished crème brûlée. He strikes it on and sets fire to the two nearest men before spinning around and shoving it in the direction of the men advancing on him from the other side. It gives them pause enough for Sanji to ditch the torch and kick them both upside the jaw at the same time.

 

He leaps and instead of landing on the ground he lands on the shoulders of the guy behind the ones he set on fire, kicking him in the head and leaping to the next guy and the next. Before too long he and Zoro have cleared them all out of the room, the ones who ran carrying their knocked out friends or just leaving them there. Sanji spots two chefs pressed to the back wall and staring at him, one carries a knife and the other a gun, they were ready to defend their kitchen, good for them.

 

Sanji turns to face Zoro, the swordsman is heading out of the back door, looking around and checking if the way is clear. Sanji frowns and plans a route in his head, it's likely that they'll have to just bail on the city and head to the outskirts in an attempt to meet up with Robin and Usopp. They can keep a low profile so it's possible that they won't be caught up in-

 

The air is forced from his lungs violently and he staggers forward with the force against his back. He looks down in shock and sees the whole front of his waistcoat on the left hand side splattered with blood and ripped up. There's... there's a hole in his chest.

 

“The fuck?” Sanji rasps, only one lung inflating for him to speak. He touches the hole in confusion, it's huge. He turns slightly, there's the cook behind him and to his left, the one with a gun in his hand.

 

“You... shot me.” Sanji says in shock, his voice rattling with blood in his lungs as he speaks.

 

“Sanji?” Zoro calls, but Sanji doesn't look.

 

“Die already. You're no chef, you're a pirate. I hate pirates and I hate people who disrupt my kitchen even more.” The man snarls at him.

 

“But-” Sanji hacks, and blood spills out of his mouth, thick and almost black in colour.

 

“SANJI!” That's Zoro again. He must be upset.

 

“He's not dying!” The other one says behind him. Sanji realizes that he'd forgotten about him and he only just feels the slice of a blade before he drops to the floor like a sack of potatoes. There is a pressure shock of displaced air and then a slam of two bodies hitting the ground.

 

Sanji stares ahead from his place on the floor, the two men are alive or at least the head chef in front of him is.

 

“You're... a chef...” Sanji breathes, unable to even comprehend. If they were marines then... but they're not.

 

“You're chefs.” Zoro repeats in a dark and evil voice.

 

“I was going to kill you for this, but I think this will hurt more.” Zoro states. There are two swipes of steel from twin blades, one pass then another. Dual screams ring out through the kitchen.

 

“Sanji, can you hear me? Can you move?” Zoro asks, his voice suddenly a lot softer, his fingers touching Sanji's shoulder.

 

“Can't... feel anything below my ribs. He got a knife in.” Sanji explains. He knows how he did it too. Sanji's done it a thousand times to lobsters, a quick nick of the spinal cord right between the joints. If Sanji had a blade he could have done it as easily. He's a chef but he could perform a butchers job too, he knows every tendon, muscle, bone and nerve of every creature, even humans.

 

Zoro snarls and slides one arm under Sanji's neck and the other under his hips. He lifts him gently and turns him so that Sanji's front is pressed to Zoro's, his limp legs held in Zoro's arm and his head and arms over Zoro's shoulders.

 

“We're getting you out of here, you'd better fucking heal this like you did your arm cook or I'm gonna-” Zoro orders him, though he doesn't elaborate on just what he'll do.

 

As Zoro runs from the still screaming men Sanji gets all too long a look as to why they are still alive and screaming. Zoro has removed their hands. Sanji squeezes his eyes. He feels sick. Even though those chefs tried to kill him, in a kitchen no less, in a betrayal of what it means to be a chef... he can't handle seeing that kind of pain inflicted on someone's hands.

 

Zoro is out of the door and off down streets that Sanji doesn't recognize and doesn't care to. His world is spinning and his mind is jumbled. He can't stand, what if he can't fight, how could they use a kitchen knife against him of all things?

 

His panic starts to subside when his back begins to itch and the feeling in his legs begins to come back in a wave of pins and needles. He shifts his legs a little and he feels Zoro's hand tighten on them.

 

“You're moving.” Zoro pants as they blur through the city, scattering dust and sand in their wake.

 

“Healing I guess.” Sanji responds and wiggles his toes inside his shoes. He's got feeling back but he doesn't want to try running, not at this speed for sure. Zoro doesn't try to make him either.

 

Zoro eventually places him on the ground, kneeling down and holding him up, though the effort is unneeded.

 

“I don't feel so good.” Sanji admits unsteadily. His world is spinning and blurring at the edges, he feels as if he might faint.

 

“You look like shit. You're white as a ghost and your eyes are all... you look more like Brook than yourself.” Zoro eventually says, staring at him with a terrified expression. Sanji stares back blankly, he's never seen Zoro so scared.

 

“That is still a really big hole in your chest and it's not healing.” Zoro says uneasily, leaning down to look at it. His forehead knocks against Sanji's and Sanji's head slides down Zoro's neck, his forehead pressed against Zoro burning hot skin. He squeezes his eyes shut, it would be great if the world stopped spinning so badly. He shudders and knows that if he was still breathing he'd be gasping air in to stay awake.

 

“You need blood.” Zoro says slowly, like it's just dawning on him.

 

The words don't really register for Sanji.

 

“You need blood. Sanji, bite me.” Zoro insists, pulling him close and tilting his head to the side.

 

Sanji doesn't even have the energy to breathe in to talk anymore. Zoro makes a noise but Sanji can't parse what emotion it is.

 

“BITE ME.” Zoro shouts in his ear and Sanji's jaw is tilted up, his face pressed against the joint of Zoro's neck and shoulder.

 

He doesn't even decide to do it, it just happens. His fangs sink into Zoro's skin his long canines leading the way against the pressure of Zoro's flesh before popping through them, like a knife through the skin of an almost ripe tomato. The rest of his sharp front teeth follow through, top and bottom. Blood rushes into his mouth, filling the whole space in seconds. His throat works and suddenly his system starts to warm from his belly outwards.

 

Sanji's vision sharpens again, it comes out from monochrome and stops blurring at the edges. Each full swallowed mouthful breathes more life into him. His hands cling to Zoro's back and he holds him close, almost crushing Zoro to him as he gulps down more and more of the thick, perfect blood. It's got that same taste again, that Zoro taste and aura to it. Sanji can't get enough, it's so Zoro it's-

 

NO

 

Zoro is his nakama. NO!

 

He pulls off of Zoro with a gasp, a squirt of blood still hitting his mouth as he disengages his teeth from Zoro's neck. Blood runs down Zoro's shirt and in a stupid irrational panic Sanji leans in and licks it from the flow of his collar bone to the punctures on his neck. He watches in mute shock as the punctures knit shut, though they still have a seriously nasty and painful look to them but at least they're not bleeding anymore.

 

“Zoro, ZORO!” Sanji yells, pulling Zoro back away from him.

 

“Eeee...” Zoro grins hazily and tips forward and to the side, hitting Sanji and rolling off onto the sand.

 

“ZORO!” the cook yells again in horror.

 

“'m fine, that was... wow I feel drunk.” Zoro laughs, uncoordinatedly patting Sanji's face.

 

“What?” Sanji blinks in confusion. Zoro is smiling up at him like the happiest man in the world, is this a pain reaction? Is he delirious from blood loss? But... unless he was drinking for longer than he though, which he supposes is possible, then Zoro hasn't lost anywhere near as much blood as he's seen the guy lose in a fight.

 

“That felt great, how'd you do that?” Zoro beams at him, his hand in the collar of Sanji's shirt as he pulls him down onto the sand.

 

“I didn't mean to, you made- no. No, this is my fault I shouldn't have bit you, I lost it, I'm dangerous and now... now I've doomed you too. Being bit killed me and now I've gone and killed my own nakama!” Sanji says, his voice rising higher and higher with panic as he scrambles to his knees.

 

“I don't feel dead, and I'm right fucking here you know.” Zoro grumbles at him, the high seeming to wear off a little.

 

“No, you don't get it. I bit you, now you're going to die just like I did and I'm the one who did it to you! Don't you understand?!” Sanji shrieks, waving his arms at the oblivious marimo.

 

“Yeah, no. I feel fine. You looked like shit right before you keeled over when you got bit.” Zoro argues, leaning up on his elbows to look at Sanji. There's a spreading stain of blood on his white shirt but none on his skin, though the knitted together bite looms like an angry accusation.

 

Sanji leans forward and clutches his arms around his knees. He's a monster. A monster. He shouldn't be trusted, he shouldn't be allowed around the people that he loves, his nakama aren't safe with him. He bit Zoro without even thinking about it. How can he ever forgive himself?

 

“Sanji? You're being weird.” Zoro says, resting his hand on Sanji's shoulder to try to make him look at him.

 

“Don't touch me!” Sanji yelps, skittering backwards in the sand away from Zoro. The swordsman stays where he was, kneeling with his arm outstretched in Sanji's direction. If he goes near his nakama then he could hurt him even more.

 

Zoro settles down and watches him, sat in an almost meditative stance and practically radiating calm. Eventually, and Sanji doesn't know how long it's been, he feels somewhat calmer and is able to properly look at Zoro again.

 

“I'm fine. If that was going to kill me I'd be dead by now.” Zoro says, his voice calm and level, almost emotionless.

 

“No thanks to me. I shouldn't have- I'm a monster.” He chokes. He hates feeling weak like this, the normal him, the living him, would have kicked his ass for acting like this.

 

“Is Chopper a monster? What about Brook or Franky? Robin and I get called demons, how about us?” Zoro persists, getting closer to Sanji and getting up in his space with a scowl. This is familiar, this he can deal with.

 

“That's different. You're all- you're how you're supposed to be, there's nothing wrong with you.” He argues back, contrary as always.

 

“You're so fucking stubborn, you know that? But that's why you're here, you're so stubborn and annoying that even the afterlife wanted you gone. You're still here aren't you? I'm fine and you don't have a hole in your chest any more, look.” Zoro insists, poking Sanji's bare skin through the ripped and wrecked hole of his waistcoat. Sanji looks down and sure enough there is perfect, unmarred pale skin there, you'd never have known that anything had happened.

 

“Wait a minute, come here.” Zoro frowns. In true Zoro fashion he doesn't wait for Sanji to comply, he just does what he wants. Zoro leans in and catches Sanji under the chin and hauls him close, looking at him up close with Sanji pitched forward with his hands on Zoro's knees to keep his balance.

 

“What.” Sanji says flatly, not happy at being manhandled like this.

 

“You look... alive. You look like you're sick as hell but you look alive.” Zoro breathes in wonder, his thumb running across Sanji's cheek. As close as the two of them are Sanji can feel Zoro's breath on his skin as he speaks.

 

“Really?” Sanji asks in disbelief. Zoro's eyes scan his face, flicking from his eyes to his cheeks, his mouth and more.

 

“You look like you're a pale shut-in but yeah, you look alive.” the swordsman responds.

 

Rough fingers reach down to Sanji's throat and two of them settle into the side of his neck, his pulse point. Sanji doesn't breathe, doesn't move and the two of them wait for the longest time.

 

“I'm still dead though.” He eventually says. Zoro shrugs and leans back, letting go of Sanji as he does it.

 

“You didn't drink more than usual, so what gives?” the moss head wonders aloud with a frown.

 

“Are you sure I didn't? You seemed pretty out of it when I stopped, you said that you felt drunk. Your judgement might not be really reliable you know and I was barely aware enough to know what I was doing, let alone how long I was doing it for.” Sanji argues back, his fists balling at his sides in anger at himself. Regardless of what Zoro says it was still a terrible thing of him to do to put his nakama's life in danger like that.

 

“I didn't feel like that until you licked me afterwards. Before I hardly felt anything, it hurt less than the needle that Chopper uses. You might even have drunk less than you usually do when we have the whole needle and tube set up.” Zoro answers casually.

 

Sanji frowns. That doesn't make sense, why would everything have changed when he licked Zoro? It also doesn't explain why licking him made his wound heal up like that. It's almost like how Sanji's own injuries heal up. Which brings him to another question.

 

“Why didn't my chest start healing before I bit you?” he wonders, his hand touching the skin there.

 

“What are you, stupid? Your weird powers clearly run off of how well fed you are. I wouldn't heal as well as I do if I didn't have you feeding me properly, why would it be any different with you? The only difference is you heal like that.” Zoro says, snapping his fingers for emphasis.

 

“The real question is why does biting me make more difference than using the needle? Maybe you being closer to the source helps like... uh... fresh food compared to tinned food or something? I don't know, I'm no good with food comparisons.” Zoro admits awkwardly. His ineptitude makes Sanji grin and for once he doesn't feel self-conscious about his fangs showing.

 

“That makes fuck all sense, but I suppose the dead guy shouldn't be complaining about logic, huh?” Sanji laughs quietly.

 

“Well, whatever it is, we'd better move. Those assholes may well have reinforcements by now and I'm not intending on getting shot again.” Sanji declares, getting to his feet.

 

He checks the ground around him making sure that he hasn't lost anything and pats himself down to confirm it. Wallet, keys to the pantry and fridge (Nami has a spare set so hopefully Luffy won't get into everything whilst he's gone), wristwatch, sewing kit and his precious... book...

 

Sanji's hand flies to his waistcoat and he tugs it open, nearly ripping off the buttons in his haste. He jams his hand into the ruins of his pocket and pulls the book out. It's splattered with dark and nearly black blood, charred in places from gunpowder and worst of all there's a huge hole punched right through the middle of it.

 

“Oh shit.” Zoro intones behind him as he looks over Sanji's shoulder at the book.

 

“Look, you and I both read it, we know what it said. We can tell Nami what we remember and she might still be able to get things from the book, it's not all ruined. We didn't know lots of that stuff before and we still don't know if it's all true. It's more information than you had before- SANJI STOP MAKING THAT NOISE!” Zoro finishes with a yell. Sanji realizes that there's a high pitched distressed whine coming from inside of his chest and he's gripping the book hard enough to indent the edges.

 

“Yeah. Yeah... okay.” Sanji breathes, forcing himself to relax. He puts the book back inside his ruined waistcoat, hoping that their memories and whatever remains of it will be enough to help Nami find it. For a few long awful moments Sanji feels glad that those men lost their hands and he wishes that he could have been the one to do it, but it passes as the thought is simply too awful to hold in his head.

 

“We need to go find the others.” Sanji states, changing the subject. Zoro watches him warily but agrees, perhaps glad of the change of subject and for a distraction. Sanji walks in front of Zoro so that he doesn't have to see the man's expression or the horrible bite on his body.  

  
  
  


“Zoro! Oi! ZORO, SANJI!”

 

Sanji’s ears perk up and he whips around, that was Usopp’s voice. They’ve been walking towards the East side of the island for some time now, trying to get to where the ship is supposed to be moored and hoping that they can regroup with the others.

 

“What is it?” Zoro asks with a tilt of his head, stopping and looking back. They’ve been walking side by side on the crest of a hill, making it harder for Zoro to wander off by mistake.

 

“You don’t hear that? It’s Usopp.” Sanji says, squinting down into the valley below and trying to pick out the sharpshooter.

 

“SANJI! OVER HERE!”

 

His gaze snaps off to the side and he thinks that he sees movement in a tree, it’s either Usopp or a very small bear flailing around in those pine needles.

 

“USOPP! GET UP HERE!” Sanji hollers back.

 

“Where is he? I can’t see him. I think I heard him that time though.” Zoro says with a frown, his own eyes scanning the valley below.

 

“He was there, in a tree. Near that stream.” Sanji says, leaning in close to Zoro and pointing in the right way.

 

“That’s miles away Sanji.” the swordsman says in a stunned voice.

 

“I guess my eyesight is dead on.” Sanji grins at Zoro toothily. Zoro looks over at him slowly, his eye twitching slightly.

 

“If you start with the skull jokes too I will throw you down this hill.” Zoro threatens lowly. Sanji grins darkly, that is far too tempting for him to pass up.

 

“Threats Zoro? You wound me. Good thing I heal though.” Sanji replies.

 

“Brook got you into this didn’t he? It’s his fault that I’m having to listen to this crap.” The swordsman demands irritably, “When I get my hands on him I’m going to-”

 

“Kill him? Over my dead body!” Sanji laughs loudly. Zoro snarls and swings one of his swords at him which Sanji manages to dodge.

 

“Get back here!” the other man yells, chasing Sanji around a large rock. Sanji ducks quickly as the rock splits in half.

 

“Whoa, that was a near death experience right there.” Sanji manages to say in breaths between side splitting laughs. Zoro’s face is just too impossible not to laugh at. He’s so pissed off but also he looks vaguely mortified to know Sanji, much less be nakama with him. He just can’t resist though and by the time that a rather confused Usopp and Robin make their way up the hill Sanji is sprawled on the ground and crying from laughing so hard whilst Zoro sits several feet away seething quietly.

 

“I’m not entirely sure that I want to know what happened here.” Robin says smoothly, looking from one of them to the other.

 

“I can- hahaha- I can tell you Robin.” Sanji giggles, pushing himself upright.

 

“NOTHING HAPPENED. Don’t start talking again!” Zoro barks at him, standing up and glaring, his fists clenched at his sides and the very view of it making Sanji snigger into his fist in mirth.

 

“We heard in the town that two pirates had been attacked and they were attempting to apprehend them but it’d gone badly. We figured that a level of destruction that high had to be your work so we thought we’d head back towards the ship.” Robin says thoughtfully, gazing back in the direction of the city that they left behind them.

 

“Yeah, they ambushed us, it went badly.” Zoro nods in agreement.

 

“ZORO! What happened to you? Your shirt is covered in blood!” Usopp exclaims loudly, stepping forward quickly, his hands coming to Zoro’s shoulders as he peers at Zoro’s neck and shoulders. Zoro doesn’t exactly look great right now. He’s covered in blood from the fight as well as Sanji’s own dark blood from their escape. Very little of what is on Zoro’s shirt and skin is his own, but it was Sanji that made him bleed. His laughter suddenly stops and Sanji feels a cold trickle of dread run down his spine and a hot sense of shame burn bright in his stomach.

 

“It’s uh-” Zoro frowns, his eyes flicking to Sanji in desperation as he tries to think of what to say.

 

“Are those… teeth… marks?” Usopp asks slowly, fear radiating through his system so bright that Sanji can feel it from where he sits. Usopp keeps very still, only his head and eyes move slowly towards Sanji, wide and terrified.

 

Sanji opens his mouth to say something, to say anything. To protest that he didn’t mean to, that Zoro asked him to, that he nearly died without it. He wants to point out that Zoro is okay, that none of his blood got into Zoro and that the other man isn’t going to end up like him, it’s been hours now. But nothing comes out and the way that Usopp eyes his teeth makes Sanji’s jaw snap shut.

 

“Usopp.” Zoro says sharply.

 

“Sanji, I don’t wish to interrupt but you appear to have a large hole in the middle of your clothes and you too are covered in blood.” Robin points out, looking down at what had recently been a fist sized hole in Sanji’s torso. That’s what happens when someone fires a large gun pressed right against someone’s back.

 

“He was shot and stabbed too. It blew a giant hole through him, if he’d been alive it would have killed him.” Zoro cuts in quickly.

 

“And it nearly did anyway. Sanji stopped healing, he ran out of… whatever it is that he gets from blood that keeps him moving. We didn’t exactly have the proper medical kit, it’s fine. I told him to.” Zoro says, that last comment aimed at Usopp who winces and looks sheepishly over at Sanji. Sanji ducks his head, still not able to meet Usopp’s eyes. What will Chopper say when he sees Zoro?

 

“Get up, we’ve got to go back to the ship.” Zoro says, kicking Sanji in the small of the back. The blonde nods silently and gets up, stuffing his hands into his pockets and still avoiding looking at anyone.

 

“Quit sulking, I preferred it when you were making shitty jokes.” Zoro grumbles, knocking his shoulder into Sanji’s.

 

“You hated the jokes.” Sanji mumbles unhappily. Is Chopper going to put him back on blood in bags or demand that he carry around medical supplies forever? Assuming that he’s left alone with anyone ever again. He’ll probably-

 

“Yeah, and this is worse. I prefer the smug, shit joke making bastard.” Zoro snorts, bumping his shoulder roughly into Sanji’s.

 

“Want to hear another?” Sanji grins weakly.

 

“I will stab you.” Zoro replies quickly and glares. Sanji can’t help but laugh at that and he half wonders if Zoro intended that.

 

The four of them walk along eastwards in the direction of the shore with Usopp and Zoro in the lead and him and Robin following behind, which is probably a bad idea if he thinks about it. He can hear the way that Zoro’s boots crunch on leaves and twigs, the way that the tread on Usopp’s snags up grass as he walks. Most interestingly he can hear how quiet Robin is in comparison, how she steps around twigs and loose rocks carefully and without even thinking. He wonders how long she’s been doing that and how he’s never noticed it before.

 

He presses his hand to the hole in his waistcoat and considers rather sadly that it is beyond both his repair skills and those of any reasonable tailor too. The feel of the book underneath it fills him with regret again and he wishes for all the world that the bastard chef hadn’t shot him just there. Robin would probably be outraged to see a book treated that way as well as him treated so badly.

 

“Hey Robin,” Sanji says, the thought suddenly occurred to him. “You like books, have you ever had to repair any?”

 

“Hm? A little maybe. Some of mine have had loose or detached pages when I got them. Generally speaking though I often find how a book has been treated when it comes into my possession says a lot about its history. Though I don’t allow them to come to harm once they come to me, not if I can help it anyway.” Robin answers him thoughtfully. Zoro’s head tilts slightly and he can tell that Zoro is listening in.

 

“So you couldn’t do anything for this? I mean obviously not the hole in the middle but the blood on the pages maybe?” Sanji says, pulling the book out of his waistcoat and holding it out to her.

 

“It was a book on legends, but there was a whole chapter on All Blue, on ideas of how to find it. It had formulas and weather patterns to look out for but…” He sighs and lets Robin take it from him. She looks at the book in her hands and her eyes widen as she takes in its ruined state, the hole blasted in the cover and Sanji’s drying blackish blood crusting into the pages. Her eyes flick to the hole in his waistcoat and her pretty mouth tightens into a displeased line, her whole expression going dark.

 

“A pair of chefs were the ones responsible. They paid for it, I cut off their hands.” Zoro says over his shoulder to her.

 

“You cut off the hands of chefs?!” Usopp balks and looks immediately at Sanji. He still feels a little sick thinking about it. They tried to murder him, hell, if he hadn’t been dead then they would have. Moreover they destroyed what may well have been his best shot at finding All Blue. Even so the thought of their hands… it makes him feel ill. He can’t fault Zoro for it though. If someone had killed Zoro then Sanji doesn’t want to think about what he would do in retaliation, probably something equally awful.

 

“Do you think that they died?” Robin asks carefully, her eyes on Zoro. The swordsman tilts his head thoughtfully in that way that he often does, it makes him look almost like an owl sometimes.

 

“It was the middle of the city, there were a tonne of marines and other staff there. They probably got to a hospital before they could bleed out. They deserved to die though.” Zoro answers and his fists clench, muscles in his forearms standing starkly out as if Zoro might change his mind and go back to finish the job.

 

“No, it’s better that they live.” Robin concludes with a nod, “That way they have to live their whole lives mutilated in the worst way to them, a lifetime to think about what they did. I hope they live a very, very long time.”

 

Sanji stares at Robin and reminds himself that whilst Robin is a beautiful perfect flower she is unalterably deadly and ruthless in her wrath if she chooses to be. Not for the first time Sanji finds himself grateful that she’s his nakama and not his enemy.

 

“I hadn’t thought of it like that. Good point.” Zoro agrees and his hands untense again.

 

“You two are terrifying, you know that?” Usopp says, his voice cracking in fear as he looks quickly from one of them to the other. Sanji silently agrees with the sharpshooter.

 

“As for this book, I have to say that I’ve never repaired anything this damaged before, not by a long way.” Robin says conversationally. Sanji’s shoulders slump in disappointment, he’d been holding out hope that maybe the knowledge could still be recovered, at least a little.

 

“But there are three possible ways to go with this. Firstly you and Zoro read the book I assume, if you tell Nami what you remember then she may be able to work the rest out logically. If it’s to do with weather and navigation then you couldn’t speak to anyone finer. Secondly Nami works an awful lot with paper and ink, as well as dealing with old maps, she may well know how to repair the damage in what’s left of the book which would give her more information to work with.” Robin says gently, her hands reaching out and touching Sanji’s shoulder reassuringly. Sanji nods, he hopes that one way or another they can tell Nami what she needs to know to get them to All Blue.

 

“If Nami needs chemicals for her work then I can absolutely help, and Chopper might have things that I can take advantage of to make anything I couldn’t already give her, and if it’s a machine then Franky will whip anything up right away.” Usopp chips in enthusiastically, his expression bright and hopeful. Something in Sanji’s chest feels choked up, he knows that they’re nakama and this is what they do but feeling everyone pull together around him to help his dream is an incredible feeling. All he can do is nod, not quite trusting his voice right now.

 

“It also is worth considering that this is a printed book, and we know its title. There may not be many of them laying around but we can scour every bookshop and library that we come across from how on hoping to find another copy. I can’t tell you what the odds are on that, but at least we know what we’re looking for now.” Robin adds as her final point.

 

“Yeah… yeah.” Sanji nods, a smile growing on his face and hope lighting up in his chest again. He thinks that he catches the edge of a smile on Zoro’s face, but when Zoro turns his head straight again he can’t see to be sure.

  
  
  
  


When the book is dropped on Nami’s desk she makes a small sound of disgust and looks up at him and Robin like they’re cats who have just dragged in and laid a dead mouse at her feet. Zoro would have come up here too but the moment he got on board and Chopper saw him he was dragged off to the medical room post haste. Usopp had gone to tell Luffy what had happened so it’s just him and Robin now.

 

“It’s a book on All Blue and how to find it, or it was. Part of it at least. But then I got shot when I was carrying it and… it didn’t end well for either of us, but I can heal.” Sanji explains.

 

“Robin, I need ice water and cotton buds now, as many as you can get me and as fast as possible!” Nami says urgently, the archaeologist nods and dashes off out of the room.

 

“Sanji, how far through was the section on All Blue?” Nami demands, picking up the book and delicately peeling back the cover, which comes apart from the pages with a sick ‘schlick’ sound.

 

“Uh, uh, about halfway, I think. A little earlier perhaps?” Sanji says, shit, how come he can’t remember? What good is he going to be in piecing together the missing information if he can’t even remember that sort of thing?

 

“Okay.” Nami nods and runs her thumb to the corner of the pages about a third of the way through. She leans down so that her eyes are level with the book and pulls back the corners of the pages, not enough to disturb the hole through the middle but just enough to see a few words at the end of the pages. He watches as he carefully flicks through page by page. Robin returns with her supplies and places them carefully on Nami’s desk.

 

“Robin, over there in the corner, top drawer on the right. There’s blotting paper in there and I need it, could you bring it to me please?” Nami says distractedly as she reads. Robin nods and goes to fetch what she’s asked to.

 

“Here, All Blue, I’ve found the right section. Okay… here goes.” Nami says softly, probably more to herself than to him.

 

She worms two fingers into the gap in the corner of the pages and presses down and, with a steadying breath, pulls the other pages and the cover back slowly. She grits her teeth as it opens to the hole shot through it and with a little gentle teasing of the pages she manages to pull the cover and earlier pages apart from the chapter page on All Blue. Sanji can see the title of the section still there in legible print.

 

Nami reaches over and tears a strip of blotting paper off of the larger sheet on the top of the stack. She jams it into the space between the first page of the section on All Blue and the end of the section before. Then she gingerly pulls the first page apart from the one below it. It snags at the point where the bullet exploded through it. Without even looking she reaches one hand into the drawer under her desk and draws out a scalpel, flicking the rubber lid off of it. She flips it over so that the blunt side is facing into the book and uses its thin edge to pry the pages apart, burnt and bloody though they are. With a minute or so of work the pages come apart and Nami quickly slots another sheet of the paper in there, so that the blotting paper backs each side.

 

“You’re lucky that your heart doesn’t beat Sanji. If you still had a beating heart this book would be drenched and completely beyond saving.” Nami says distractedly. She reaches out for a cotton bud and dabs one end of it gently in the cold water.

 

“Sanji would also be beyond saving though, as he would have bled to death over the book and everything else.” Robin points out grimly. Nami visibly winces at her words.

 

“Like I said, you’re lucky.” Nami says softly. She runs the cold, wet, cotton bud over the page and a large amount of Sanji’s blood comes with it. A few more passes and that small section of the page is stained but legible again.

 

“It’s working.” Sanji gasps in awe. The skills of his lady nakama never cease to amaze and astound him.

 

“It’s going to take me a very long time to complete this section of the book Sanji, and I’d focus better without you leaning over my shoulder.” Nami says distractedly, waving one hand at him as if to waft him away on a gentle breeze. At this point if that was what she wanted he’d do his very best to do just that!

 

“Sanji and Zoro read the book before it was damaged. I said that it might be a good idea for the two of them to record their recollections of what they read to help fill in the holes in the text as you have it. Perhaps quite literally.” Robin says with a small smile at her unintended joke.

 

“That,” Nami says, snapping her fingers in Sanji’s direction. “is an excellent idea. Sanji, go find Zoro and write down whatever you both remember. Maybe you can jog each other’s memories.”

 

Sanji pauses but apparently Nami meant now and so he awkwardly shuffles off to go and do as he’s told. He supposes that Zoro might be done with Chopper by now. He was insistent enough that he was fine that he may have been able to squirm out of Chopper’s doctorly grasp early. If he hasn’t then Sanji counts being near Chopper’s medical room pretty highly on places that he wants to be nowhere near right now.

 

He heads down to the men’s quarters because Zoro is likely to be getting changed or showering if he’s out of Chopper’s or if not yet then he will head there. Zoro doesn’t bathe a lot, though he does at least shower or throw himself in the sea most days (though often that’s due to Luffy’s idiocy than Zoro’s choice) so despite Sanji’s teasing he doesn’t actually stink very often. So as he’s covered in several different kinds of blood he’s more likely than not to pass through the men’s quarters.

 

As usual he’s right, and when he gets in there he smells Zoro’s discarded shirt before he sees it. Zoro’s pretty tidy with his clean laundry and other effects but with dirty stuff for some reason he just seems to drop it on the floor and assume that magical elves take it away to be washed.

 

“You are gross Zoro.” Sanji mutters under his breath and heads over to the shirt. He figures that he may as well tidy up a little and put Zoro’s gross clothes in the laundry whilst he waits for the other man to get out of the shower or the bath. That said, this shirt may be beyond cleaning at this point and instead it could be more sensible to throw it away entirely.

 

He picks it up by the shoulder and the shirt falls open from the wadded up ball that it had been on the floor. He can smell his own blood on it as well as small splatters from several unwilling marine donors. When the shirt falls open though the smell that assaults his senses most of all is the smell of Zoro’s own blood.

 

The feeling of his fangs going through Zoro’s skin, of perfect and gorgeously warm blood in his mouth and he can smell the trail of where Zoro’s been now, like highlighter fluid through water almost superimposed on his vision. He can track that smell and follow it right to Zoro and then he can bite-

  
He throws the shirt to the floor in horror, stopping only to scrawl a message that Zoro needs to write down what he remembers reading before sprinting out of the room and locking himself in the kitchen. 


	6. Chapter 6

“You've been avoiding me.” Zoro says from behind Sanji.

 

Back when he was human the cook would have jumped. For a man with such clunky boots and a usually heavy walk their swordsman can be damn quiet when he wants to be. But lately Sanji's ears have been sharper and sharper, he'd heard Zoro coming and put the knife down.

 

“If I was avoiding you then I wouldn't be here now would I?” Sanji points out but doesn't turn around to face Zoro.

 

“I didn't say that you were avoiding me now, I said that you have been avoiding me.” Zoro reminds him.

 

“What of it? You know that I don't like your face.” Sanji responds and slides the chopped leeks into the frying pan. It's lunchtime and he's making a few simple omelettes, mostly greens and some leftover cold meats.

 

“Sanji.” Zoro says flatly.

 

Sanji sighs and turns around. It's such a deliberately passive aggressive move now that the whole breathing thing is optional, but that almost makes it better. Instead of Zoro being able to write it off he now knows that Sanji is doing it on purpose.

 

It's a stare down between the two men. Sanji has his hands in his pockets and his jaw tilted at Zoro in a gesture of defiance whilst the swordsman has his arms folded across his chest stubbornly.

 

“You need to get over yourself.” Zoro says eventually, as if it's some easy casual thing.

 

Sanji's jaw drops at the guts of the very statement.

 

“Excuse me?!” He squawks indignantly.

 

“So you're technically dead and you drink blood now. No one cares. Get over it. I get that it takes some adjusting to but your sulking is pissing me off.” Zoro shrugs.

 

“WHAT?” Sanji yells in outrage.

 

“You're acting like you think that I'm overreacting to a bad haircut and not, you know, my DEATH.” Sanji screeches. A smirk tugs at Zoro's lips and Sanji watches his eyes drift up to Sanji's signature hairstyle.

 

“Don't you dare. Don't you fucking daaaare.” Sanji hisses and narrows his eyes at the swordsman whose shoulders are shaking with suppressed laughter by now.

 

“Or you'll what?” Zoro snickers, holding his sides now as the occasional spurt of laughter escapes him.

 

“Or... or else I'll fucking bite you.” Sanji snaps.

 

He regrets it instantly. That's the whole reason he has been avoiding Zoro, and yeah he'll admit it to himself that he has been avoiding him. This is why he can't be trusted.

 

“Good, so I get to insult you and get you to do what I came in here for.” the swordsman laughs happily.

 

“No, I can't...” he says with wide eyes, shaking his head. Zoro just raises one solitary eyebrows at him and tilts his neck and taps at the fading bite mark. It doesn't even look like he ever broke the skin, it's just a nasty bruise now, more like a hickey than an injury. Hah, a love bite.

 

“That was different. That was an emergency and you made me. I'm not putting you in danger like that again.” the cook says sharply. He's on Chopper's side here. He could have killed Zoro and he's not willing to risk it again.

 

“I'm not in any danger at all, if it was going to hurt me it would have done so already. Even Chopper has given me a clean bill of health and you know how paranoid he is about that kind of stuff. If I was going to end up dead from this then it would have happened by now.” Zoro says easily.

 

“OH. OH WELL THEN, THAT'S FINE!” Sanji shouts angrily.

 

“I'll just go throw Luffy in the ocean then, I mean, if he was going to drown to death then he would have done it by now, after all he's been in the sea before. Never mind that it's killed other devil fruit users and it's nearly killed him before, I'm sure that if it was going to kill him then 'it would have happened by now'!” Sanji continues yelling, doing an impersonation of Zoro's voice whilst he's at it, and not a particularly flattering one at that.

 

Zoro doesn't respond, he just stares at him flatly until Sanji's rage runs out. With nothing more irritating coming from Zoro the blond runs out of steam relatively quickly.

 

“Now that you're done,” Zoro starts.

 

“I hate you moss brain!” Sanji interjects sharply. Zoro ignores him and carries on.

 

“I've been talking to Robin and she's been doing research on mythology or whatever, you can talk to her about it if you want to listen to all that crap. I sure as hell don't. But I got the important bit. In all the stories people get turned into vampires when they drink each other's blood, it's a two way thing. You said that you bit the guy who bit you back.” Zoro says calmly and reasonably.

 

Sanji scowls. He did bite the guy, he remembers just how gross it was.

 

“So as long as you don't bleed in my mouth we'll be fine.” the swordsman says with a wave of his hand. Sanji hates his nonchalance. How can he be so goddamn calm?

 

“Zoro, you know how much you and I end up bleeding in fights. What if we're fighting marines and one gets me in the face or shoots me again like the other day and my blood gets spattered into you mouth? Besides, you've got that disgusting habit of yours.” Sanji says with a wrinkle of his nose.

 

“What habit? You're the one with bad habits cook, you smoke the place out.” the swordsman says sharply.

 

“You lick your stupid swords, it's a wonder that you've not caught anything yourself yet. Don't deny it, I've seen you do it mid fight you sick fuck.” he accuses. To Sanji's satisfaction Zoro looks at least a little embarrassed at being called out on that. Sure it's sinister and a mind fuck for whomever Zoro is fighting, but it's hardly hygienic is it?

 

“I think it has to be at the same time, like it was with you. Not ages away like that.” Zoro responds after a few long moments.

 

“What you think and what Robin reads from fairytales isn't worth risking your life over. Case closed, now I've got lunch to make.” Sanji says and turns back around to his workstation.

 

Sanji forces his shaking hand onto the handle of his knife and pulls the cold ham over to himself, ready to cut it into small chunks to fry into the omelette.

 

“You liked it.” the other man says softly behind him. Sanji's eyes widen and his back goes stiff with tension.

 

“It felt a hell of a lot better for me than being Chopper's pincushion and you looked so much better for it. I couldn't stop this from happening to you so will you at least let me help? What's happened to you isn't the end of the world and if what you're scared of comes true and I end up like you then... then that's a risk I'm willing to take.” Zoro says quietly.

 

Zoro doesn't shout and he doesn't argue, he just says things like they're true.

 

“I'm not going to make you, I wouldn't do that. I only forced you before because you were going to die permanently then, I could see it happening. But if you didn't want to do it again then you wouldn't be avoiding me. If you didn't want to then you wouldn't be keeping yourself from temptation, would you?” Zoro says.

 

“It's been four days Sanji.” Zoro says in the same quiet worried voice that he'd heard outside of Chopper's room. There's a moment or two of silence and then Zoro turns around and leaves. When the door clicks shut Sanji puts his knife down again and runs a shaking hand through his blond hair.

 

He swallows thickly as his mind floods with images, sensations and thoughts. He remembers what Zoro's blood tastes like and how much better it tasted right from his body rather than through a tube. His tongue itches with the memory of the way his blood would pulse through his mouth as Zoro's heart beat, panicked worried beats at first which he could almost taste before fading into slower and calmer thumps of his heart. He had felt Zoro's life with his teeth and tongue and God help him but he wants it again.

 

He knows that he shouldn't risk Zoro's health and life again like that but... oh it was so good. A nasty little voice at the back of Sanji's mind chips away at his resolve, telling him that Zoro is asking him to do it, that he won't be doing anything that Zoro doesn't want. It tells him that Zoro is right about it being harmless, he's not hurting his nakama at all, it's fine.

 

“Shut up, shut up.” Sanji hisses to himself.

  
  
  


It's been seven days since Sanji bit Zoro and even Sanji can admit that he's starting to look more dead than usual. His skin is pale but with an almost blue tinge to it, reminding him of a bad case of frostbite. His eyes are still grey but the dark circles under them are getting more and more bruised looking by the day. He rests his hand on his stomach and feels a pang of the hunger that's starting to gnaw there and has been ever since Zoro came to talk to him to convince him to bite him again.

 

When he goes out on deck he hears the thunk of Zoro's weights from above. The sound is cottony and fuzzy, his sense are getting duller with each passing minute and he's sure that they're worse than they were when he was alive. He looks up and his insides remind him of his growing hunger and so he clenches his teeth and climbs.

 

When he makes his way into Zoro's weights room he can see the man just pressing out the end of a bench press, an obscene amount of plates on either side of the bar making the thing bend in the middle. Zoro locks the bar against the frame and sits up, his skin almost glowing in a stark contrast to Sanji's pallor.

 

Zoro sits up and pants a little in exertion as he looks at Sanji who is still standing uneasily in the room by the trap door. Sanji shifts uncomfortably but figures that he might as well just come out and say it because the patient expression on Zoro's face suggests that he will happily wait there in silence if it means forcing it out of Sanji.

 

“I need-” Sanji tries, his hand on his stomach.

 

“I'm hungry and I know that you're gonna be an ass and not let me do this any other way than biting you, right?” Sanji says again.

 

“Right.” Zoro nods.

 

“Figures.” Sanji huffs but the sentiment is mostly faked. He stands there, unsure of what to do because he can't listen to the drive in the back of his mind that is just thinking about sinking his fangs into Zoro and just-

 

“Are you gonna stand there all day or what?” Zoro asks flatly, interrupting Sanji's internal strife.

 

“Excuse me but I don't exactly know how I'm supposed to go about doing this. I'm not gonna just burst in here, say hi and then bite you. There's got to be...” Sanji gestures for a thought that he can't reach. There's got to be some way of doing this and getting to that point that doesn't feel so... so forced or so awful.

 

“Psh, you wanna buy me a drink first or something?” Zoro laughs mockingly and Sanji scowls at him. He's not trying to kiss Zoro or sleep with him, he's not a girl that Sanji's flirting with here!

 

“I hate you.” Sanji hisses and again, it has that deep nasty tone in it that makes him jump. Zoro doesn't react beyond grinning smugly at him with an expression that says 'I know and I do it deliberately'.

 

“Fine.” Sanji grits out and warily sits down on the bench that Zoro was using for his bench press.

 

Zoro tilts his head and looks at Sanji and the blond realises a fraction later that Zoro is offering himself up to Sanji. He swallows hard nervously.

 

“Can you just... talk to me? Tell me if I hurt you or... just talk... please?” Sanji begs quietly, the last word coming out quiet and shaking. He never speaks to Zoro like this, with fear or pleading, it doesn't gel well with their rivalry or their bickering. Weakness is the kind of thing that gets leapt on to one up the other, but now he has no choice.

 

“Sure.” Zoro says easily, not acknowledging the trembling tone of Sanji's request.

 

Sanji swallows again and realises that he's been doing that a lot. He pushes himself up on his knees and leans over, he rests one hand on the thick muscles of Zoro's thigh and the other on his shoulder. He leans in and opens his mouth and runs his tongue along his sharp pointed fangs. He shakes and drops his head against Zoro's shoulder, his eyes squeezed shut, he can't do this.

 

“You're so fucking cold.” Zoro says quietly and his hand comes up and rubs briskly along Sanji's ribs as if he could force some warmth into the unmoving blood under Sanji's skin.

 

“Okay.” Sanji says mindlessly and steels himself even though his reply doesn't match what Zoro said at all. He lifts his head up and regards the smooth bronze skin before him. He moves his mouth towards one of Zoro's larger blood vessels, probably on some kind of instinct. His teeth touch the skin but there's no pressure there at first, he's just... adjusting to the idea that he's going to consciously choose this action.

 

“If I don't stop, if I lose it... you'll fight me, right? It doesn't matter that I'm nakama, just do what you have to. Promise me.” Sanji says suddenly, pulling back and making Zoro sigh in irritation.

 

“I can hand you your skinny ass any day of the week cook, especially when you look as fucked up as this. I promise, okay? Now get on with it.” Zoro groans and rolls his eyes. Sanji grits his teeth and doesn't rise to the bait, Zoro cannot kick his ass any day of the week and he knows that full well. He's not going to argue. Instead he leans back in, his hand tightening on Zoro's thigh anxiously. Zoro doesn't say anything about it and in return Sanji doesn't remark on Zoro's hand going back to it's place on Sanji's ribs or the way Zoro's thumb works softly against him like he's soothing some kind of small animal.

 

He brings his teeth to the same place again and with a desperate hope that he doesn't hurt Zoro, he bites. His teeth push through Zoro's skin with little resistance and that thick blood wells in his mouth. Before he can register how good it feels he becomes sharply aware of the little breath that Zoro sucks in and Sanji freezes. He doesn't want to take his mouth off of Zoro because for one Zoro will bleed all over the place and two... two he tastes really good and Sanji is so goddamn hungry. Still, he needs to know what that noise was so he makes the best interrogative inquisitive noise that he can manage with his mouth full.

 

“It doesn't... I can feel you but it doesn't hurt, it doesn't feel like anything.” Zoro says slowly and Sanji relaxes a little.

 

His bottom teeth had sunk into Zoro's neck a little as well but he doesn't need them to so he pulls back a little more so they're out, he keeps his lips a tight seal on Zoro's skin though so that the blood that's welled out out of there doesn't go rushing down his chest and make a mess.

 

Sanji can't explain just how good it feels, it's like everything is right again, like he's come in from the cold and is finally warming up. He runs his tongue over the small punctures from his bottom teeth and Zoro sighs softly.

 

“Feels... good actually.” Zoro mumbles against the fabric of Sanji's shirt at his shoulder.

 

Sanji swallows a few times. Zoro still tastes the same for the most part, that Zoro-ish taste that he's had every time, but there's something different in there too. It's not the sweat on Zoro's post workout skin, though there's that too. No, it's something else.

 

It feels like the difference between tasting and smelling something, intertwined but separate senses. There's almost an emotional flavour to Zoro this time, some undercurrent in his blood that Sanji feels right inside him. It feels like the warmth of the Baratie at night, like blankets around shoulders with nakama close by telling ghost stories to each other in the small hours of the night. It feels like a hug when you need one and the right words at the right time.

 

The feeling hits him in the gut and Sanji whines through his nose as it coils inside of him, other and unfamiliar though not unpleasant in the least. Zoro seems to misunderstand and his hand tightens in the cloth of Sanji's shirt.

 

“It's ok, you're fine, I'm fine.” Zoro says firmly and the taste or smell or whatever it is that Sanji's getting gets twice as strong. It occurs to him all at once and it makes him stop swallowing for a moment in shock. He's tasting what Zoro is feeling, or perhaps what Zoro is projecting at him, what he wants Sanji to feel. It's calm and safety, it's the reassurance that everything is okay and good with the world. Sanji drinks it in deeply, not hungry for Zoro's blood right now so much as he wants that feeling of peace.

 

He musters up some self control though and pulls his teeth free of Zoro's skin with a smooth careful motion. He keeps his mouth in place and runs his tongue slowly over the marks, wanting to make it as painless and normal looking as possible. Zoro's given him so much and he's so fucking grateful for it that he feels as if he might burst from the emotion. The trickle of blood against his tongue has long since stopped and Sanji pulls back to look at the mark, it's hardly there.. Sanji swallows for a moment before licking Zoro clean again.

 

Sanji takes his hands off of Zoro and leans back, watching the other man carefully. Zoro looks at him with hazy eyes for a moment before breaking out into one of his rare sunny smiles.

 

“You look better.” Zoro says, beaming at him. Sanji looks down at his hand and sees that it's closer to his normal colour than the ghostly white it had been before. That same hand drifts down to Sanji's stomach. Where before he had felt hunger now he feels satisfied and... calm. It seems that whatever he picked up from Zoro is sticking around for a while.

 

“I feel better.” He says softly, dropping to straddle the bench with one leg on either side just like Zoro is. Their knees touch and Sanji stays still, his eyes half shut as he focuses on that radiating calm feeling.

 

“Holy shit Sanji, how'd you do that?” Zoro asks in stunned shock, snapping Sanji out of his happy glow.

 

“There's not even... there's hardly a mark, let alone a scratch!” Zoro says in awe, his fingers tracing across where Sanji just bit. Sanji leans in and looks, he can see a few small dents and nicks where his teeth were but as he watches it they stitch back together without so much as a dent in their wake. It's just like watching his own injuries heal, like when Zoro sliced him up.

 

“Do you think it's my spit or something?” he wonders aloud. It makes about as much sense as the rest of this supernatural crap.

 

“Eurgh.” Zoro grimaces and shoves Sanji onto the floor.

 

“It was a sensible question!” Sanji shouts indignantly and kicks Zoro in the knee hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to do damage.

 

“I don't want to think about your slobber all over me.” Zoro grouses and rubs at his shoulder.

 

“Oh, but me sticking my teeth in you and drinking your blood is just fine then?” Sanji shoots back.

 

“Apparently so. The muscle doesn't even hurt or anything.” Zoro says thoughtfully, stretching his neck to the side in a test of the muscle there in a way that is disturbingly starting to ping Sanji's nervous system in an oh-yes-please kind of way.

 

“Well. Thanks, you know, for. Yeah.” He mumbles, flicking his tongue out to lick his lips out of habit and only realizing what he's done when he gets that steely tang of Zoro back in his mouth.

 

“Any time.” Zoro says easily and yanks Sanji to his feet. Not that Sanji had any problem getting up or anything. He spots what Zoro's doing though when the other man doesn't let go of his arm.

 

“I mean it.” Zoro says quietly but firmly. “Whenever you need it just tell me, come find me. Deal?”

 

Sanji glares at the floor, he doesn't want to- but well, he needs to and Zoro clearly isn't going to let him go unless get gets some kind of satisfactory answer. Zoro does have logic on his side, Sanji needs to eat, just like any of the rest of the crew. Only his diet is a lot more complicated morally speaking. Or maybe it's less. Sanji feeds the crew meat, certain members more than others, and those animals didn't agree to being eaten. They died for the crew to eat. Zoro on the other hand is more than just consenting, he's outright offering and cajoling Sanji into feeding off of him. If anything it might be more ethical in some sick twisted way. Regardless, this isn't a problem that's going to go away by him ignoring it.

 

“Yeah, ok. I will. Really.” Sanji assures him. Zoro lets go of his grip on Sanji's arm, releasing to go back to doing whatever he wants.

 

“I'd better go... I have dishes to wash.” He says, excusing himself and making his way back down to the ladder. Halfway down he looks up and sees Zoro's ass, it and presumably the rest of Zoro is following him. Sanji pushes off of the ladder and lands on the grass with a near silent impact, leaving Zoro to slide easily down the rest of the ladder.

 

“I'm gonna have a nap.” Zoro declares with a jaw cracking yawn and a vertebrae popping stretch.

 

“Shit, it's not because I took too much blood is it? You're not light headed are you?” Sanji asks in a panic.

 

“I will punch you in the face, I swear.” the swordsman threatens, his eyes narrowed in a way that tells Sanji he really does mean it.

 

“Jesus, I was just concerned is all.” he snaps back. Honestly, it was a sensible question. Again.

 

“In. The. Face.” Zoro says raising a fist.

 

“FINE!” Sanji yells, throwing his hands in the air and stomping off to the kitchen. He ignores the small victorious laugh from Zoro. The swordsman drops to his ass on the grass and flops back in the sunshine with a happy sigh. Sanji can hear the other man snoring before he's even finished filling the sink with hot soapy water for the dishes.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

The next two months pass easily. A routine sets up between Zoro and Sanji, every three days or so he'll come find Zoro or Zoro will find him and he'll bite Zoro. If they've been in a fight with marines or if Sanji's expended a hell of a lot more energy than normal the schedule will be moved up, but otherwise it says fairly consistent.

 

Thankfully for everyone Chopper has stopped freaking out quite so much about their new method of getting blood, concluding with his scientific mind that it does seem to produce better results than their previous methods of draining Zoro with a needle. Sanji would be happier about that if Zoro wasn't such a smug fucker when he's right.

 

Chopper had also become interested in Sanji's statement that Zoro tasted and felt different from time to time. Through a little trial and error they'd concluded that diet didn't seem to affect Zoro's taste all that much, though screwing around with the iron in his food seemed to make Zoro less filling for him if it was low.

 

Sanji doesn't really like drinking from Zoro in public, not that he's ever done it but the mere thought of it makes him cringe. It doesn't help that it's a rather... physical thing. Zoro's hands are on him when he does it, giving Sanji physical feedback on whether or not he's hurting Zoro at all and giving the man another means to tap out of it if for some reason he can't bring himself to say it.

 

There's a feeling that's growing each time he bites Zoro, something that he can taste underneath the baseline Zoro flavour. It's like the feeling of peace that he felt from him when he first bit him in Zoro's weights room. Only... it's different. It makes Sanji's chest tighten and he feels that if he was still breathing his breath would catch. He feels almost hungry or... needing something, yet when he takes his mouth from Zoro he's far from feeling hungry.

 

He's also quite pleased that he's got the knack of cleaning up his bite marks so that they fade in a day. He has to lick them just so to clean Zoro up and make it heal right. There are still the reminders that he's not human though, he knows how cold he must be because when he licks Zoro's wounds better the other man shivers all over. No matter how much he apologises though Zoro always says that it's okay.

 

Little by little he's adjusting to being dead. His reflexes were shot when he first came back but now they're razor sharp. He's always been a little faster than Zoro but now he's noticeably faster than the other man. The two of them had tried to keep pushing it on the ship but Franky, Usopp and Nami banned them from going all out on something that was both as precious as the Sunny and also the only thing stopping them from all drowning to death in the ocean.

 

The first tiny spit of land that the ship had gone by the two of them had ran overboard as fast as Nami could kick them out.

 

“Let's see how fast you move now!” Zoro snarls at him, his face alight in a feral grin.

 

“Faster than you kelp face!” Sanji shoots back and digs his feet into the sand, springing forward as far as he can. He goes well out of Zoro's reach, twists in the air and lands with his toes digging into the sand and one hand braced on the beach, spraying an arc of sand behind him.

 

Oh wow, he is well out of Zoro's reach. A decent sprint out of Zoro's reach in fact.

 

Zoro dashes and lunges for him, swings his sword in the space that Sanji no longer occupies. Feeling cocky Sanji lands right on Zoro's head and uses it as a springboard to go off in the other direction, exerting enough opposite force so that Zoro falls face first into the sand.

 

“You- ptha- ASSHOLE!” Zoro yells, spitting sand from his mouth.

 

Sanji has to hold his stomach from the force of his laughter. His mirth leads to Zoro managing to turn his nice shirt into crop top at the front.

 

“OI!” He yells and kicks upward hard and fast. Zoro blocks with his swords and the strength of Zoro's block reverberates down Sanji's leg. He's never been able to get through one of Zoro's blocks, never. You can go under it or over it, even around it if you're fast enough, but never through it. He is pleased that he kicked hard enough to earn himself a metal grating sound though.

 

He flicks himself backwards in a backflip because he knows how easily those guarded blocks turn into three bladed slashes outwards. Sure enough Zoro does just that, cutting the rest of Sanji's shirt off at the back, leaving him with a band of useless fabric falling down his legs that Sanji stumbles in the process of kicking off. In revenge for his ruined shirt he kicks it right at Zoro's face, where it hits with an amusing 'thwap' sound.

 

He runs off deeper into the array of palm trees, using their cover to avoid Zoro's attacks. Unfortunately the island suffers a sad bout of deforestation but that's not Sanji's problem.

 

He leaps for a tree, lands against it sideways with his feet planted on the bark. He seems to almost hang there for a second and he zeros in on Zoro and watches the path of the sword in Zoro's right hand. Of the two that's the slightly weaker one and though the arc that Zoro's swinging the thing in is perfect there's a little hitch where his wrist physically can't bend that way and he has to switch his grip just... THERE.

 

Sanji explodes off of the tree and cracks his foot into Zoro's wrist. Zoro's hand snaps open from the shock to his tendons and the sword comes free. Sanji snatches it and rolls out of his jump, tucking it awkwardly against his now bare midsection so that he can roll with it without stabbing himself or getting it stuck in the sandy ground. He catches his balance and gets to his feet, not as smoothly as he'd like but he's not used to navigating his movements whilst armed. He shoulders Zoro's sword and grins at him.

 

Zoro stands there completely stunned, his hand closing on nothing as he looks at the footprints that Sanji had somehow left on the tree halfway up it where he launched off. Zoro's gaze turns to him and he stares at Sanji like the blonde had just pulled a rabbit out of his ass.

 

Zoro grabs Wado from his mouth and his jaw clicks shut sharply, a competitive glare darkly taking over Zoro's whole face. He switches gracefully to two sword style, his feet shifting in the sandy dirt before leaping at Sanji again. This time he finds himself considerably hindered by the weapon. He doesn't have a sheath for it so he has to move without hitting anything else with it or stabbing himself. It's harder than he looks and perhaps Zoro might deserve a modicum of credit for doing it all of the time. Maybe.

 

Zoro swings from his left and Sanji jumps but lands awkwardly, caught off guard and off balance. He falls and rolls with it, Zoro's sword shearing off part of Sanji's sleeve. Sanji skitters back on the sand. He digs a hand and a foot in before kicking Zoro flat in the solar plexus and sending him flying. That gives him time enough to get to his feet and rush Zoro. He slams his shoulder into Zoro's shoulder, momentum carrying them both to the ground. Sanji slams his elbow into Zoro's forearm and forces the man's hand open. He wrestles Wado from the man's grip and bounces off before Zoro can stab him or punch him.

 

Sanji is a safe enough distance away and bouncing gleefully on the balls of his feet. He is fast, so fast. Being dead deserves some perks and this is an awfully good one. Zoro has gone from stunned to pissed off.

 

“What's the matter Zoro? Lose something?” Sanji teases, waving the two swords in his hand.

 

Zoro has gone from pissed off to murderous.

 

Zoro lunges for him, hard and fast, fast enough that Sanji almost has a problem seeing him. Zoro's sword is aiming at a stab rather than a slash, which is odd for Zoro's style. Sanji shifts to duck inwards but suddenly Zoro flips the sword, pointing it behind himself rather than at Sanji which means that-

 

Sanji gets a fist in his temple and Zoro's ample body weight slammed into him. The two of them go sprawling in a heap of discarded swords, ripped clothes and one angry swordsman. Zoro jams his knee into Sanji's thigh, pinning him rather painfully and then proceeds to introduce his fist to Sanji's side repeatedly.

 

Sanji tries to push Zoro off with his right hand and tear a chunk of hair out of his head with his left. Zoro isn't letting him up and out though and without the space to move Sanji's speed means nothing. Which is exactly why Zoro has done it.

 

Sanji tries to knee Zoro with his free leg but with the limited room that he has he can't shift Zoro either. He kicks out and tries to squirm up and out of Zoro's grip but the swordsman cuts that short by slamming his hand into Sanji's hip and holding him there. It'd be hard enough to bruise if he still had blood flow.

 

Sanji struggles, trapped and angry at being caught like this, he'd been doing so well and-

 

Zoro gets too close and Sanji has his teeth in Zoro's neck before he even thinks about what he's doing. There's a startled yelp of pain that makes Sanji disengage. He never hurts Zoro, never. He doesn't get his mouth off of Zoro fast enough before a slosh of his blood and a flood of 'hurts so- ohgodyes' floods his mouth.

 

Sanji surges back to the bleeding on Zoro's neck, his tongue running over it and Zoro shudders all over with a harsh grunt.

 

That's not pain Sanji's tasting. Well, it is but, good... pain? He can't work it out. It's not like the taste of Zoro is verbal and he's far too damn panicked by biting Zoro out of reflex to think about it much. Zoro's hand lets go of Sanji's wrist whilst Sanji has his tongue pressed to Zoro's throat, silently begging it to heal and stop bleeding. He can feel it knitting together and the bleeding is stopping but before he can finish his work Zoro's hand grabs his hair and pulls him off of him, slamming him into the sandy ground.

 

He gasps in a breath to apologise, to beg Zoro to forgive him for biting him, to curse himself for reacting like that. It was a pushing the limits spar not a-

 

All of that is swallowed up when Zoro shoves his mouth against Sanji's and kisses him hard enough that Sanji is sure his head is leaving an imprint on the sand below.

 

Zoro doesn't give him time to react and he's being so intense that it feels almost like he's trying to lick the taste of himself out of Sanji's mouth.

 

This... this explains a lot of things. And now Sanji feels very stupid.

 

With that aside however his whole system lights up. Maybe it's Zoro's blood inside of him, the needy way that Zoro responded to the pain of being bitten, the adrenaline from their fight or what, he doesn't know. Either way he's got his fingers buried in Zoro's hair and is kissing him back as hard as he can.

 

The hand that had been punching Sanji in the side in their grapple and then pinning him down is suddenly smoothing it's way up Sanji's side and under his shirt. Not that he has much of a shirt left now, thanks to Zoro, that wardrobe ruining fucker. He snarls in displeasure and catches the edge of Zoro's lip with one of his sharp teeth. An ever so slight trickle of blood runs over his tongue and the taste of Zoro is almost entirely overwhelmed with YES and NEED YOU so much that it feels like he's been punched with it.

 

He wriggles against Zoro. The man is throwing off heat like a furnace and it feels so good. He pulls one hand from Zoro's hair and squeezes it past Zoro's arm and runs it down over any bit of Zoro's chest that isn't pressing him into the ground. It's nice to get a chance to appreciate Zoro's muscles when they're not trying to, you know, maim him.

 

“Sanji, Sanji...” Zoro pants against his mouth between kisses, making Sanji whine in response. He can feel the way that Zoro's heart hammers in his chest, vibrating through Sanji himself and making him feel alive with it.

 

Zoro rolls his hips against Sanji, Zoro's left thigh on the outside of Sanji's and his right between them. Zoro grinds into him and Sanji arches back out of reflex. God, he can feel how hard Zoro is already. How has he managed to do that to Zoro so quickly? He managed to do that to him! Sanji's head spins giddily with the idea.

 

And then stops.

 

Suddenly.

 

When he realises that whilst Zoro is hard as hell Sanji isn't. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

 

He shakes it off and kisses Zoro back harder. He tries to take all of Zoro in, the smell of him, the taste of the slight trickle of blood against his lips as Zoro kisses him with his nicked open lip. He feels the way that Zoro rubs his hand on Sanji's side like he's trying to feel every inch of him that he can reach and-

 

Nothing.

 

Nothing is happening. Sanji isn't hard and clearly isn't getting that way and something is very wrong.

 

“Zoro stop.” Sanji gasps out and Zoro pushes off of him in a kind of one handed push up sort of way, not that now is really the time to be vaguely impressed at Zoro's athletic prowess but still.

 

“Sorry that was- are you okay?” Zoro pants. His face his red and his eyes are dark and oh, hey, Sanji can actually see how hard Zoro is through his trousers. Sanji scrambles back and glances down in embarrassment. Still nothing.

 

“It's- Igottago!” Sanji blurts out and sprints back towards the ship, using all of his new found speed to get the hell away. He ignores Zoro's voice calling out after him.

 

He gets to the shoreline, leaps up onto some rocks and bounces from there out over the water to the ship, lands on the rail and drops to the deck of the ship. He proceeds to scare the crap out of Usopp who had been midway through building a mostly successful tower of cards. Apologizing would take time though and Sanji doesn't have any of that right now. He skids over the deck and bursts through the kitchen door, the room is thankfully empty and he hurls himself from there and down into Chopper's infirmary.

 

Chopper yelps in surprise and nearly falls off of his chair in shock. Sanji slams the door behind him and locks it.

 

“You never told me that this would be a problem!” He yells at Chopper who stares at him in wide eyed confusion.

 

“Told you that what would be a problem?” Chopper asks in bafflement.

 

“My heart isn't beating!” Sanji yowls, knowing full well the extent of his 'problem'.

 

“Uh, I'm pretty sure that I did tell you that. A lot.” The doctor says slowly.

 

“I don't mean that! I mean, my heart's not beating, I have no blood flow!” Sanji snaps, pacing on the spot.

 

“That... that's a little obvious. You knew that though, you don't bleed, remember?” Chopper says gently, as if suspecting that Sanji has lost his mind.

 

“No, I mean I have no blood flow.” Sanji grits out, pointing down in the direction of his belt.

 

Chopper stares at him for a beat, for two and then his face lights up in understanding.

 

“OH! You mean you're having trouble getting an erection!” Chopper exclaims, sounding proud of his deduction.

 

“Don't say it like that!” he protests in mortification. It's so much worse to hear it like that!

 

“But that's what you mean, isn't it?” the reindeer says patiently.

 

“Yes, fine. Just... fix it!” he begs desperately.

 

“Sanji, short of somehow making your heart beat again there's nothing that I can do. Physical arousal occurs when blood flow is-” Chopper starts, his clinical doctors voice coming in to play.

 

“I know how it works! I also know that it is currently not working. You have to do something!” Sanji wails miserably. This cannot be happening to him, he had Zoro right there any everything was going so perfectly and he wanted it so badly and then THIS happened. Or... didn't happen.

 

“Sanji,” Chopper says gently, with a little frown appearing on his furry brow. “Why are you so suddenly interested? You've been like this for a while and this hasn't come up before now. Oh, sorry that was a poor choice of words, I mean, why are you troubled about this now?”

 

There's a thud of boots on the deck above them, a clatter of swords.

 

“Where's Sanji? Did you see him?”

 

“He went that way, why?”

 

“My cards!”

 

“I am not in here! You're a doctor, you can't tell!” Sanji hisses and ducks down behind the bed in case Zoro breaks the door down.

 

“That's not really how that works, doctor patient confidentiality is-”

 

“Shut UP!” Sanji orders as quietly as he can.

 

“Sanji! Sanji are you in here?” Zoro shouts, the doorknob rattling.

 

“Oh.” Chopper says quietly, apparently getting why Sanji is so suddenly interested. Sanji glares at him pointedly.

 

“Sanji? Chopper?” Zoro calls through the door.

 

“I'm in here Zoro.” Chopper says after a moment.

 

“Great. Is Sanji in there?” The swordsman asks pointedly. Chopper pauses, his brown eyes turned on Sanji.

 

“I'm afraid that I couldn't say.” Chopper responds flatly.

 

“We are having venison for dinner!” Sanji snarls under his breath. Chopper purses his lips and the rational part of Sanji's mind reminds him that it's not a great idea to piss off the guy who wields scalpels for a living, but you could say the same of the guy who cooks your food too.

 

“Sanji, just come out here and talk to me!” Zoro demands, but Sanji stays stuck to the floor behind the bed, curled in on himself with his head on his knees. He hears Zoro hiss angrily through his teeth after a few long seconds of silence. Chopper opens his mouth and Sanji glares furiously at him, Chopper closes his mouth again.

 

“Fine. Chopper, if you see Sanji will you tell him to go fuck himself!” Zoro yells angrily.

 

“That's not physically possible Zoro.” Chopper says flatly, ducking as Sanji flings the pillow from the bed at him.

 

“Venison STEAKS.” Sanji snaps back as Zoro's angry footsteps stomp away.

  
  


Sanji gets himself kicked out of Chopper's office pretty soon after that, apparently threatening to kill and cook someone doesn't make them sympathetic to your problems. Who knew?

 

Sanji sneaks out onto the deck, deadly silent and fast. Being dead has few perks but the ability to virtually ghost by people is one of them and he's going to exploit it as much as he can. Zoro is back up in his training room and Sanji can hear the thump and clink of Zoro's heavy bag as the man punches it. It's likely not a good time to go and talk to him. Not that Sanji has any idea at all of what he'd say to Zoro. No, that's a conversation he's going to avoid for a while.

 

Sanji sneaks down into the aquarium room and finds Brook there, perched on the edge of the lacquered surface of the grand piano as he plays his violin.

 

“Being dead sucks.” Sanji laments, walking up to him and dropping himself into the piano seat.

 

“Hm. Why so now?” Brook hums in a tone that suggests ever so slightly that he's getting tired of this line of conversation.

 

“Because- just... don't say this to anyone else but... sex.” Sanji groans miserably.

 

The violin music stops and there's a soft clicking sound. Sanji looks up to see Brook thoughtfully tapping his violin bow on his jawbone.

 

“Zoro I suppose, based on your timing.” Brook says thoughtfully.

 

“Tell no one.” Sanji grates out.

 

“Of course, I wouldn't but Sanji-” Brook starts to say.

 

“It's just not FAIR! I've still got the parts but my stupid shitty heart doesn't push my blood around enough for me to use them! I can't get hard and I just want-” Sanji wails but gets cut short by a door swinging shut. He snaps around to see Franky peering around the staircase where it curves around the wall and into the room.

 

“Uh. Bad time to interrupt?” Franky hazards a guess, looking at the pair of them dubiously.

 

“Ugh.” Sanji groans, rubbing his face with his hands miserably.

 

He hears Franky come closer and feels the creak of the piano bench under him as Franky sits down.

 

“If it's any consolation,” Franky says, his voice soft and low. It sounds like something quiet and secret, offered out of trust.

 

“I have the same problem.” He finishes.

 

Sanji's head snaps up and with wide eyes he looks at Franky. He sees himself in mirrored sunglasses but he can still read the careful expressionless look on Franky's face.

 

“But you're alive.” Sanji says in confusion. Franky's mouth twists downwards.

 

“I was hit front on by a train.” He points out, his voice a little sharp.

 

“I repaired myself as best I could, and I am pretty SUPER. But I'm no doctor, Sanji. I had bigger priorities at the time, making sure that my blood stayed in me, making sure that it went to my vital organs okay and replacing those that didn't survive. Do you know how hard it is to engineer a liver? I- never mind.” Franky says, shaking his head and cutting the trail of thought off.

 

“By the time I got to making sure that appropriate nerves and blood supplies to... other places... were okay it was a little too late. I'm like you I guess. Still got the goods and the nerves but they don't work.” Franky explains with a shrug of his shoulders. Franky's playing it off as no big deal but Sanji feels like it's a huge deal for him, he very much doubts that it's as unemotional an issue for him as Franky seems to be portraying.

 

“So... what do you do?” Sanji asks slowly and carefully.

 

“Heheheh...” Franky laughs with a dirty smile on his face and Sanji regrets opening this line of conversation already. He can feel that this is going to be scorchingly embarrassing and he's pretty sure what he's feeling now is future mortification radiating back through time because it's too much to handle in one go.

 

“Well there's other parts that work just fine for fucking, but that's best done with someone else. Though there are plenty of things that I've built that work perfectly well for being on your own if you're planning on getting your rocks off by exploring your happy cave.” Franky says with a scandalous waggle of his eyebrows.

 

“Don't ever utter those words again.” Sanji begs in horror.

 

“How about butt spelunking?” Franky grins.

 

“Please stop.”

 

“Back door loving?”

 

“No.”

 

“Poking the chocolate starfish?”

 

“Franky, I will rip your throat out with my teeth, so help me God.” Sanji snarls, deliberately making his voice go shuddery low as he bares his teeth. Franky looks freaked out for a second before bursting into laughter so hard that it rocks the bench.

 

“Franky's euphemisms aside Sanji, I really feel that your situation isn't that bad.” A smooth ladylike voice says from behind him.

 

Sanji freezes. That is Robin. That was Robin's voice and Robin has been there the whole time and oh God.

 

“Kill me now.” Sanji groans, his head falling forward and banging on the piano keys with a discordant sound.

 

“Don't hit my piano with your face.” Brook says disapprovingly.

 

“Killing you would be somewhat redundant don't you think Sanji?” Robin says gently and hops herself up onto the piano top in front of Franky, her purple skirts fluttering with the motion. Sanji pleads with the universe for him to stop existing but Robin starts talking again anyway.

 

“Really though, plenty of fun can be had as the receiving party. Franky I'm sure will be able to tell you that.” Robin says smoothly with a slick lipsticked smile on her face that feels vaguely shark-like.

 

Why? Why does she- why?

 

“It's SUPERRR!” Franky agrees, twisting and slamming his forearms together.

 

“But if you're persistent on being the penetrative party for some reason then there is always equipment that you can use. Strap on phalluses if you will, quite a range in fact.” Robin says lightly.

 

“I'm not hearing this, this is a horrible dream.” Sanji whines quietly, pressing his hands over his eyes. If he tries really hard he'll wake up and this won't be happening. Robin is quiet for long enough that he actually takes his hands away from his face and looks at her. She looks at him with her most prim and innocent smile.

 

“You can always borrow one of mine.” She says innocently.

 

Zoro is right. There is no God.

 

He squawks in horror, leaps up, trips backwards over the piano chair and sprints from the room. He wants to get as far away from that conversation as he physically can be whilst not throwing himself overboard, after all if he does that one of them might come after him. Well, Franky would come after him and then those hands would be on him and Sanji does NOT want to know where those hands have been no matter how thoroughly implied and oh dear God.

 

Unfortunately this leaves him clinging to the rafters of Zoro's training room atop the highest mast. Zoro is glaring up at him like a particularly irksome bird.

 

“Kill me again please.” Sanji begs weakly.

 

“Don't tempt me.” Zoro growls, his arms folded angrily.

 

Oh, yes. He bailed on Zoro earlier. Twice in fact. Zoro probably does want to stab him a little, and knowing that he heals pretty damn fast now he might just indulge himself in that desire. Sanji sticks to the rafters for now.

 

“I owe you an apology.” He says meekly from up high. Zoro scowls at him.

 

“Go on.” Zoro says darkly.

 

“I panicked.” Sanji explains.

 

“No. Really.” Zoro responds, his tone so heavy with sarcasm the words practically slam into the floor like weights. Sanji tries to think of what to say but before he can Zoro pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs harshly.

 

“If it was too fast or you didn't want- you should have just said.” Zoro says somewhat sharply.

 

“It wasn't that at all.” Sanji insists, leaning over the beam to look down at Zoro properly, his legs swinging under him like he's a child on a swing.

 

“Then what?” Zoro demands glaring up at him.

 

“Do we have to talk about this?” Sanji asks hopefully.

 

Zoro unsheathes a sword and swings it at him, Sanji blocks it with a foot. Zoro didn't really mean it, there wasn't that much force in it. He's still pissed though.

 

“Okay, we'll talk but-” Sanji tries to find the words, shakes his head as if he can juggle them into place with the movement.

 

“You know I can feel things through your blood, taste them kind of. Remember?” Sanji begins hesitantly.

 

“Uh. Yeah, you said calmness or even that one time when it felt like sunshine.” Zoro says in a tone of confusion. Sanji remembers that one with a happy shiver. The rest of the crew had been out on the mini merry fishing near a little coral reef for new pretty members of their aquarium and left the two of them alone. He'd swallowed Zoro's blood under the sunlight when the man was still half sleepy from sunlight and it had been perfect.

 

“Yeah, like that.” Sanji answers, for all that the words do no justice to that feeling.

 

“I felt that you wanted... that.” Sanji says skirting around the word. “But... was it just that? A one time 'I beat you in a fight' kind of thing?”

 

“You didn't beat me!” Zoro shouts in indignation.

 

“I got your swords out of your hands!” Sanji yells back. No way an achievement of that magnitude is going to be swept under the rug thank you very much.

 

“I had you pinned!” Zoro argues.

 

“You were unarmed!” Sanji snaps.

 

“You weren't getting away, were you?” Zoro points out.

 

“Oh I got away just fine as I remember, this is why we're having this conversation, no? Anyway! We are getting away from the point! Was it just that once or what?” Sanji demands, he's not going to let Zoro derail this. If he's going to be mortified today then Zoro sure as hell has to be too, it's only fair.

 

From the way that Zoro studiously doesn't look at him and seems to be going a suspicious shade of red Sanji can guess his answer. Not a one time thing then.

 

“Is that what I've been tasting then? It feels kind of hot... here... fluttering...” Sanji says with his eyes shut, trying to recall the feeling that's been seeping into Zoro's blood for a while. He holds his hand over his sternum and flutters his fingers.

 

Sanji opens his eyes and looks down at Zoro. If he tilts his head and strains his ears he can hear Zoro's heart hammering away, hard and fast. Hm.

 

“Before I died or after?” Sanji questions quietly.

 

Zoro glares a hole in the floor for a while before speaking.

 

“I don't- neither. Watching someone die is a fucking awful time to realise that you're never gonna get a chance to have something you didn't even know that you wanted, you know?” Zoro says quietly and though it's faded a little as circumstances have changed Sanji can still hear the pain in it. Sanji squeezes his eyes shut and utterly fails to stop himself imagining Zoro staring at him fallen dead on the floor of the Sunny and realising in one big go that he's just lost more than he thought. Grief and heartbreak all in one terrible moment.

 

“Zoro, I'm sorry. God, I keep thinking that I've found out just how much me dying hurt people and then it keeps getting worse. I'm so sorry.” Sanji apologises mournfully.

 

“Can it, you didn't do it on purpose. If you're gonna whine I'm leaving.” Zoro snaps and Sanji stops. Perhaps he needs that. Zoro doesn't indulge his self pity, not ever.

 

“I didn't run because of that. It was... dead stuff. I just got out of one mortifying conversation about it, I'd rather not have another.” Sanji groans, leaning back against the rafter.

 

“Too bad, I don't care. Spit it out or I'm gonna stab you.” the swordsman threatens, his hand going to his hip.

 

“If you laugh I will kick your face in two and wear your skull as a tasteless hat. I can't- my dick doesn't work any more okay? Yours does and I realised that mine doesn't and I panicked.” Sanji answers in one long breath. He'd hold his breath waiting for Zoro's answer if he still had to breathe. As it is he just remains statue still and shuffles himself against the rafter so that he's staring at the ceiling and so as little of him as possible is visible to Zoro. Maybe if he stays really still he'll disappear.

 

“If I say that it's okay or that it's not a big deal you will kill me won't you?” Zoro says slowly.

 

“Yessss.” Sanji answers with the rattle hiss sound in his chest and glares at the ceiling. He hears a quiet 'augh' from Zoro down below so that must have been a particularly bad one. He tries to dial it back but he can still feel and hear it in his chest. He feels like something caged and frustrated because even if he still has the right parts their use has been taken from him and he wants even more now to hunt down the man that did this to him and destroy him and everyone he's ever met. He could have had this with Zoro, that encounter earlier could have gone so differently but now he's broken, lesser, maimed in a deep and fundamental way. The teasing from the others, good natured and potentially helpful though it may have been it still... He is angry and he has nothing to be angry at and he can't get rid of the feeling without letting it out this way.

 

“Nngh. Stop that. It doesn't change anything for me.” Zoro grits out.

 

“Well GOOD FOR YOU. It's a BIG FUCKING change for ME.” Sanji snarls furiously, his voice seesawing in tone as that sound snarls up his syllables. He leans over the rafter, his fingers dig into the wood hard enough for it to splinter and his teeth are bared just daring Zoro to make out like this is nothing to him.

 

“I still want you.” Zoro says in choked out words. He's gone pale and the hand that he reaches out to touch the side of Sanji's face is shaking slightly. The moment their skin connects and the words go into Sanji's brain the noise stops.

 

A whoosh of breath rushes out of Zoro and the other man shakes his head. Sanji retreats away from him, feeling even less human.

 

“Well you can't, it won't work. It doesn't work and I'm dead and- AUGH!” Sanji yelps as Zoro catches Sanji's foot and yanks him down onto the floor with a loud thud. With a shove of his boot Sanji is on his back and Zoro has planted his butt firmly on Sanji's stomach with his knees on Sanji's biceps. He's not going anywhere any time soon.

 

“Get OFF of me!” Sanji hisses and he tries for that same hiss again, the kind that'll make Zoro back up in a hurry but he's so humiliated and Zoro looks too earnest that all he does is manage a piss poor imitation of a hiss.

 

“If you don't want to then fine, not a problem. But don't back off because your fucking masculinity is affected. Do you even know yet if it really doesn't work at all or if it's just that you can't get hard? Because you seem to have nerves elsewhere.” Zoro points out and pinches Sanji's side to prove the point.

 

“And I have hands and a mouth.” Zoro drawls smugly and sticks out his tongue. Sanji's hips jolt slightly and Zoro's smile gets seriously smug.

 

Wow, okay, so he can give that some thought later. By himself. Aw shit, he's not going to be able to give that the kind of alone time thought that he could have done before now, can he? His fucking death sucks.

 

“Besides, that's not all that we can do.” Zoro says easily.

 

Sanji's mind instantly snaps to Franky's lewd suggestions, imagines Zoro over him, in him. His mind skitters from that and back straight into Robin's mortifying insinuations about fake dicks and suddenly his mind is playing him an image of Zoro naked on his back, leg hooked around Sanji's hip on one side and against the floor on the other. It wouldn't be him in Zoro though, it'd be something else, something fake and that in of itself feels wrong up until the point that his brain realises that his mind wouldn't be clouded by his own sensations and so he could watch Zoro fall apart and, oh, yeah that could be...

 

He shakes his head and realises that he'd been biting his lip. Zoro grins at him, big and broad.

 

“Back to reality yet?” Zoro teases. Sanji scowls, Zoro wouldn't be so smug when Sanji got through with wrecking him.

 

He doesn't even know where this is coming from. Sure he'd thought about Zoro a few times in the past during particularly steamy showers with a vivid imagination but Sanji refuses to believe that there are people of age in the world who have seen Zoro shirtless and sweaty and not got off in some fashion to that thought.

 

Maybe it's the chemicals in Zoro's blood that were doing it to him or maybe it's just the idea of knowing that someone wants him and he doesn't have to risk confessing that first. He doesn't have to dance with uncertainty and instead he knows that if he pinned Zoro down and did what he wanted with him he wouldn't get told that his affections weren't wanted.

 

“Shut up. I mean, I know that at the least I've got hands and a mouth for you too but-” Sanji starts, getting the speech parts of his brain up and working again. Zoro suddenly waves his arms in a crossed no motion and startles Sanji into silence.

 

“Hey, no. I like you and I want you but have you seen your teeth?” Zoro says firmly with wide eyes as if he's imagining the horror.

 

“Yeah, I do have a reflection you know.” Sanji snaps.

 

“So, I'd feel marginally safer sticking my dick in a bear trap. I don't want in your mouth.” Zoro says looking vaguely traumatised.

 

Sanji glares and doesn't point out that Zoro seems to have no problem letting Sanji's 'bear trap' teeth repeatedly maul his neck.

 

“Don't think I didn't feel that pain kink when I bit you hard earlier.” he points out meanly, turning Zoro a particularly attractive shade of pink.

 

“Anywhere but there.” Zoro mutters, looking off to the side.

 

“Fine.” Sanji says rolling his eyes, though he hadn't had any desire to bite off Zoro's dick at all. It's bad enough feeling like his is useless, he doesn't want to divest another man of his actual equipment.

 

“There's still the whole... dead... thing. I'm dead, shouldn't that bother you? Or at least the fact that it'll bother other people if we-” Sanji's head is turned off to the side, scowling a hole of self loathing into the wall.

 

“Pirate. Don't care what people think.” Zoro says easily and suddenly there's warm lips pressed up against what used to be a pulse point on Sanji's throat.

 

“Besides, you're not dead. Undead maybe? You're Sanji, that's the point.” Zoro says thoughtfully and moves to the corner of Sanji's jaw.

 

“That's... nice...” Sanji says with a sigh as Zoro continues.

 

“That's a weak word.” Zoro responds grouchily and bites Sanji, his blunt teeth not enough to get through the skin, not that Zoro is applying anywhere near enough force to be serious.

 

“Keep being nice and I might be nice too and not bring up how getting your ass handed to you in a fight made you bring this up. Should I be worried about your intentions towards Mihawk?” Sanji needles him, opening one eye to watch Zoro's face darken.

 

“Say that again and we'll see if you have a pain kink too.” Zoro threatens and Sanji hears the sound of a sword being threateningly thumbed out of its sheath.

 

Sanji turns to look up at Zoro and shows off his dangerous teeth, every bit as much of a threat as Zoro's hand on his sword. Which is to say not much of one at all and mostly for show. Still, he leans up and bites Zoro's lip slightly, just enough to give him a split lip. He chases it with a lick, tonguing the cut as it heals fast and getting a hint of just how much Zoro likes it.

 

He lets that feeling overwhelm his mind. He quietens his doubts about Zoro changing his mind, about his anatomy not working right any more being a deal breaker, about whether or not he's okay with Zoro actually fucking him and whether or not he'd ever be able to come or the million other doubts and fears in his head. Instead he just sticks with the tang of Zoro on his tongue and all of the happy chemicals in Zoro's blood lighting up Sanji's system.

 

“Still... I've gotta wonder about your motivation for getting in fights with me now algae-head.” Sanji smugly purrs into Zoro's ear, enjoying the sound of Zoro's teeth grinding together in irritation.

 

“You're the one who always started them curly-brow.” Zoro responds, shoving Sanji back down so that his back hits the floor fully. Sanji glares at him and knees him in the butt for that.

 

“I did not. You're always the one saying dumb shit or walking into my kitchen smelling like sweaty underpants!” Sanji points out indignantly.

 

“I say dumb shit? Do you hear the things that come out of your mouth around women? And I don't smell!” Zoro adds at the end sharply.

 

“You do. Let's just say one of the perks of being dead is that I don't have to breathe unless I want to, so now I can choose to avoid your stink. It's a wonder that the grass doesn't wilt when you walk by.” he answers with a dark grin and then stops breathing just to emphasize his point.

 

“Good, stop breathing. Stop talking too, every word you say pisses me off.” the swordsman orders him sternly.

 

Sanji leans back, casual and grinning. He watches the look on Zoro's face go from surprised to suspicious.

 

“Go on, I'm waiting.” Sanji says lightly.

 

“For what?” Zoro asks with a frown.

 

“The inevitable line about me having better things to do with my mouth.” He grins and watches Zoro's lips press into a stiff unimpressed line.

 

“Shut it bear trap jaw.” the other man orders him, moving his hand to Sanji's mouth to shut it for him.

 

Sanji surges forward, clamping his mouth over Zoro's index and middle finger on his left hand. Zoro freezes. The swordsman might not obsessively value his hands like Sanji does. He climbs rocks with his hands, he punches people and he gets rope burn fairly regularly. Sanji would never do any of that to his precious hands. That isn't to say that Zoro doesn't value his though, no matter how rough they look to the casual observer. Zoro's three sword style requires perfect precision and having all of his fingers working is pretty vital for that end.

 

Sanji has his teeth on the second knuckle of both fingers. Somehow he knows that if he bit down he could sever the joints, pop them out of the sockets with about as much trouble as a cork from a bottle. Zoro's skin and tendons barely even register as barriers to that aim, he can bite into Zoro's skin as easy as he can through rice paper. He knows all of that down in the deep part of him that's been watching and lurking ever since he woke up a dead man.

 

He doesn't want to do any of that though. It's not his sharp teeth that he has against Zoro's knuckles, it's his lips. He pulls back a little and runs his tongue along the seam between Zoro's fingers. His eyes flutter shut as he concentrates on the sensations through his tongue. He feels the little scars from cuts to Zoro's hands from training, he doesn't know if they're recent or from when he was a kid and still learning how to handle a blade. The roughness of his callouses on the middle pads of his fingers and the tips of them rasp against his tongue. He swallows, careful to keep his teeth off of Zoro's skin entirely.

 

He opens his eyes properly again and sees Zoro staring down at him with wide eyes and flushed cheeks, fascinated by Sanji and probably both a little terrified and turned on. Sanji releases Zoro's fingers from his mouth but he still takes the time to run his tongue up the underside of them again, this time in full view of Zoro. There's a slight strangled sound in Zoro's throat before the swordsman manages to clamp down on whatever noise he was going to make.

 

“Stop that.” Zoro says, pulling his eyes away and rubbing his hand on his shirt. Zoro is still gross, even when he's hot, how does that even work?

 

“Why?” Sanji asks innocently, thoroughly enjoying seeing Zoro even slightly ruffled.

 

“Because you're making me doubt my no sticking things in your mouth policy.” The other man grumps and sits up on his heels and stares at the floor for a few long and silent moments. Sensing that the moment has passed Sanji wriggles out from Zoro's space a little before sitting up as well.

 

“I hope this works.” Zoro says, directing his speech to the wall in front of him rather than to Sanji himself.

 

“Well, me too, obviously.” Sanji says with a frown. Obviously he wants this to work, that’s part of the reason that his body refusing to work with him was so disconcerting. That and having to add that to the growing list of things now wrong with his body.

 

“We’re nakama.” Zoro says firmly and Sanji has to think for a moment before he gets what Zoro means. It seems like a complete tangent to go from feeling hopeful about their new relationship to a statement that’s so obvious it hardly needs saying, but then he gets it. He and Zoro are nakama, they always will be. However much the two of them get invested in this new… thing… between them it can’t be allowed to change that part of their relationship.

 

“More than anything else.” Sanji agrees solemnly.

 

Some of the tension drains out of Zoro’s shoulders and though Sanji doesn’t think that Zoro was doubting him he’s pretty sure that the swordsman feels better knowing that nothing important is going to be broken here. In a way Sanji does as well.

 

He’s never been one to give up just because something is hard or because it logically is unlikely to succeed, his own dream and the dream of the rest of their outlandish crew should be proof enough of that. Logically he’s dead and the two of them have spent more time fighting than getting along. Sure, both of them respect each other deeply and sparring and bickering with each other is a tonne of fun, it always has been. But it’s not as if he pretends that Zoro irritates him when he doesn’t, Zoro pisses him off hugely for vast amounts of the time. Sometimes Zoro only even has to open his mouth to send Sanji’s blood pressure skyrocketing, or he did when Sanji still had a beating heart.

  
So, logically there is very little reason that this can end in anything but disaster. But knowing that their nakamaship isn’t in danger, that both of them have promised that it won’t be, it takes the last reason that Sanji possibly had to not do this. So it might be stupid or outrageous but he’s going to try. 


	8. Chapter 8

Zoro wanders into the kitchen in an absentminded kind of way, as if he didn’t intend to be there and instead he’s just lost. Actually, that may well be the case.

 

“You know that you’re Nami’s favourite person right now, right?” Zoro says casually as he opens the fridge and grabs a bottle of the juice that Sanji had made for everyone earlier. Zoro had turned his down until he was done with his workout.

 

“I am?!” Sanji gasps in surprised glee. What wonderful thing could he have possibly done to have deserved her affection?

 

“Yeah. She’s just gone through her ledger.” Zoro says and fills up a large glass with water and drains it almost immediately before filling it up with juice again. Sanji starts wondering if Zoro is being sarcastic now. Nami’s ledger is her meticulous record of who in the crew spent what on shore and what they spent it on. They’ve docked for one day and Nami has been recording all of their purchases again. Getting noticed by her in the ledger is rarely a good thing.

 

“Okay…” Sanji says quietly, putting his knife down.

 

“She’s totalled up how much you quitting smoking has saved her.” Zoro grins around his glass.

 

“Oh,” Sanji says with surprise. He reaches down and taps his pocket on his brown cargo shorts, he pulls out the pack of cigarettes inside them and flicks it open. He looks inside and realises that he’s probably only smoked three since he died.

 

“I didn’t even think about it.” He says eventually and pockets them again. It doesn’t feel right to throw them away.

 

“You didn’t choose to quit then? I mean, you’re dead, it’s not like they’re going to kill you.” Zoro points out with a shrug. Sanji kicks Zoro in the shin and immediately regrets his decision to do so. He’d just topped up the polish on his purple dress shoes not half an hour before and now they’re slightly scuffed and Zoro has a purple ankle. Goddamnit.

 

“No, I didn’t.” He answers with a scowl. “I just… I didn’t feel the craving any more. Maybe it’s a no blood circulation thing. Or a dead thing. Maybe a breathing thing?”

 

“It sucks for me, I can’t smell you coming any more in your big cloud of smoke.” the swordsman says with a smug grin.

 

“Did you start this whole conversation just to get in a pathetic dig about the smell of my cigarettes?” Sanji asks suspiciously.

 

“No.” Zoro says, though his face says that yes, yes he did. Sanji rolls his eyes and continues cooking his fettuccini alfredo, whisking the sauce as he cooks.

 

“Anyway, I doubt that I’m her favourite person. She’s spending far too much time working, trying to map weather patterns to help me out. She’s spending all of her time doing it and I keep having to remind her to eat and drink and-” Sanji says through gritted teeth.

 

“She knows what she’s doing. It’s important.” Zoro says, cutting him off.

 

“No, Nami spent forever cleaning that book up and she still doesn’t have a perfect version of the theory that the book put out, bits of it are still missing, so she could be wasting her time by looking at entirely the wrong things. If she starts letting her health suffer because of me I don’t know what-” He’s startled out of his irritated and slightly self-loathing tirade when Zoro leans over and bites him on the shoulder.

 

“Have you forgotten which way around this biting thing works marimo?” Sanji asks flatly, tilting his head to look at the other man.

 

“No, I was just hoping it would shut you up and it did.” Zoro smirks at him. Sanji ‘accidentally’ elbows him in the stomach when he throws the whisk in the sink.

 

He reaches out and drains the pasta through a colander, the steam rising and warming his skin. Everything else feels so warm in contrast to him now. He’s not really cold, just room temperature all of the time, but he still feels like he’s too cold. He feels even weirder when he’s got contact with Zoro, like the warm hand on the small of his back right now.

 

He swipes a spoon through the sauce and tastes it. It needs more salt. He leans over and spits the sauce in his mouth into the sink, holding his tie with one hand as he does it so that he doesn’t slobber all down it, he’s stained more than one tie that way since he started having to spit food out. Zoro’s thumb rubs on the small of his back. Sanji looks at Zoro’s reflection in the window, Zoro’s face is neutral so the stroking of his back could be idle affection or comfort at having to still do something so alien to him. It’s hard to tell but Sanji likes to think that maybe it’s comfort, whenever he has to do that he feels wrong deep inside himself.

 

He adds the salt and stirs it into the sauce before dumping the pasta into it and thoroughly mixing it.

 

“Go get the others for food, will you? Nami especially, get her first.” Sanji asks as he doles out the pasta into specific pasta bowls, not that the marimo would know a pasta bowl from a cereal bowl if Sanji smacked him upside the head with it.

 

“Ok, but you need to eat too.” Zoro says indifferently and saunters off to go complete his task. Thankfully that leaves Sanji alone with his hands frozen in place, staring a hole in the wall as his brain screeches to a stop. If he drinks from Zoro then that’ll be the first time he’s done it since they had their mutual talk and confession. It’ll be the first time that he’s drunk from Zoro since Zoro found out what was wrong with him and said that he didn’t care. Well, aside from the little nip that he got in on Zoro’s lip but that doesn’t count when compared to digging his fangs in and feeling all that is Zoro flowing through his system and- a tangle of pasta comes out of the pan into a now overfilled bowl with a wet slap. He’s glad that no one was around to see or hear that, presentation is everything and that’s hardly appetising. He clears the splattered sauce off of the edge of the bowl and decides that the overfilled bowl will be Luffy’s.

 

He continues dishing out everyone’s meals, shoving the thought of his own upcoming meal to the back of his mind. He sets out drinks, a very large glass of water for Zoro, salad and bread scattered over the table, wine near Nami and Robin and drinks of choice for the others. With that done and the rest of his crew filing in he excuses himself from the kitchen. Sanji does like to see his nakama enjoying their food but having to sit there not eating himself is just… too wrong for him to deal with. Maybe some day he’ll be able to tolerate it, but that day isn’t today.

 

“Damn it Nami, come on. Luffy’s probably eating everything right now.” Zoro’s voice filters through wooden walls to Sanji’s heightened ears. He tilts his head and listens intently. If Nami refuses to go to dinner then he’s going to pick her up and take her there himself, it might not be gentlemanly but it’s his job damnit and he’s not going to let her skip meals.

 

“I just need to finish uploading the weather data from this into my chart and-” Nami responds, her voice distracted.

 

“It will still be there when you get back. Now come ON before I drag you there by the hair, Sanji will have my ass if you don’t show up.” Zoro growls. There’s an unladylike snort of derision that Sanji wants to convince himself is Zoro because Nami is too elegant a lady to make such a sound, however the angry growl that follows it is 100% Zoro and it makes no sense for him to have made both noises. He mentally picks up the shards of his shattered illusions about his dainty flower Nami, though they’ll fit back together in no time, they always do for that vision of perfection that is their navigator.

 

“Like we don’t all know that you want- eek! PUT ME DOWN!”

 

Zoro emerges a few moments later with a scowl on his face and Nami over his shoulder before stomping into the kitchen and kicking the door shut behind him. Normally Sanji would protest the mishandling of his precious navigator, but considering that it’s for the good of Nami’s health he can let it slide.

 

Sanji makes his way up into the crows nest to keep watch, it’s one of the perks of having someone who doesn't eat food anymore on the crew, it means that no one has to eat up here and everyone can eat together at the table. Everyone but him of course.

 

He settles himself into one side of the room and though he checks behind him periodically he can mostly just zone out, observing the world around him in the detached kind of way that is the closest to sleep that he gets. Now and then something will jerk him to attention, usually just a whale clearing the water with its tail but otherwise it’s calm. There’s no bad weather around, no other ships, no nothing. Time seems to run by like water when he’s like this and so he’s a little surprised to hear Zoro’s boot steps coming towards him and the sound of him climbing up to the crows nest.

 

Zoro pokes his head into the room and then saunters in, shutting the door after him and dropping down into the curved bench to Sanji’s right.

 

“How was the food?” Sanji asks with fake casualness that he doesn’t feel.

 

“Don’t fish for compliments. But if you’re worrying about losing your edge then you’re wasting your time.” Zoro grunts, leaning back and resting his head on the back of the chair, his head tipped back and his neck stretched out and exposed at the front. Is Zoro doing that deliberately or…? Sanji watches Zoro’s pulse thud slowly under his skin.

 

He looks away.

 

“So, now that we’re…” Sanji mentally scrabbles for a word to describe whatever this thing is that he and Zoro have agreed to? Are they dating or what? He knows from what he’s tasted of Zoro that the swordsman feels seriously about this but what is the word for it?

 

“...you know,” Sanji concludes lamely, “does this mean that I do have to buy you a drink now before I bite you?”

 

“Nooooyes, yes you do.” Zoro says, changing his answer halfway through. Zoro grins at him with teeth that look almost as sharp as Sanji’s, his expression akin to the one that Nami gets when she sees people easily parted from their money.

 

“You absolutely have to buy me a drink. But you can owe me until we get to the next island.” Zoro says with a grin.

 

“You’re a saint. A shining example to us all.” Sanji says, his tone flatter than a pancake.

 

“So, now that we’ve agreed that you can just owe me…” Zoro says, ignoring Sanji’s sarcasm. The implication in Zoro’s tone is clear, Zoro’s inviting him.

 

Sanji doesn’t need to but he takes in and lets out a breath to calm himself. No matter how many times he’s done this it still feels like something hugely intimate and now that he’s agreed to more going on between them it feels doubly so. He stands up and takes the two steps that he has to that put him right in front of Zoro. The swordsman is sitting on the padded bench, his legs slightly apart and one arm resting on the back of the bench in the picture of the most casual man ever. Is this really no big deal to him or is he just pretending?

 

Sanji licks his lips nervously and spots the way it makes Zoro quirk a smile, as if it’s amusing to him somehow, the fucker. Sanji represses his irritation and forges on. He leans in, planting on knee on the bench on either side of Zoro’s legs, settling himself in the other man’s lap. One of Zoro’s hands comes up and rests on Sanji’s hip. That had been protocol before this too, a way for Sanji to read him, to see if he was going too far. Now it feels affectionate.

 

He reaches out, one hand on Zoro’s shoulder and the other on his chest. He leans in and opens his mouth, his fangs grazing Zoro’s skin. Under his hands he feels Zoro’s muscles tense, his breath hitch in and his body shudder slightly. Before Sanji would have interpreted that as Zoro’s distaste for the situation or the anticipation of pain, but now it seems far more like excitement. It’s nice to know that he’s not the only one affected by this.

 

He wants this to last a while so whilst he bites Zoro with his upper teeth he doesn’t dig in so far. There’s still that moment of resistance and then give of Zoro’s skin as Sanji bites through him. He feels and hears Zoro’s intake of breath and the near silent exhalation that sounds almost like an ‘ohhhh’. Sanji’s mouth curves into a smile.

 

He swallows and feels that bright fluttering thing in his chest again and recognises it for what it is for the first time. It’s Zoro’s heart throbbing in the most metaphorical sense, it’s butterflies inside of him and a neediness for this that he’s trying so hard to not show. Sanji melts against him. He feels the same of course, but it’s so different now that he’s dead. His feelings and affections are real but they’re solely cerebral, he’s got none of the physical symptoms of it anymore. That’s why it took him so long to clock what was going on with Zoro, his body wasn’t giving him the same feedback. But now with Zoro’s blood inside of him he can really REALLY feel it and it feels great.

 

The muscles under Zoro’s neck shift slightly and Zoro’s forehead bumps against the corner of Sanji’s jaw. There’s a bright bitter lemon tang flooding Sanji’s mouth that tastes uncomfortable, a jangly unease that he’s not felt before. He’s just about to pull his fangs out and heal Zoro up to find out what’s going on when the swordsman presses a hesitant kiss to Sanji’s neck. Zoro’s nervous. It’s so so dumb because just yesterday Zoro had him pinned to the floor, pressing kisses to his skin and then Sanji all but fellated his fingers. Not to mention the incident before on the sandy island where if they were human still Sanji is pretty sure that nakedness would have been shortly to follow. But Zoro is nervous about this.

 

Sanji strokes Zoro’s neck and his hair on the other side of Zoro from where he’s biting. His touch is light, affectionate and Zoro relaxes and kisses him again.

 

Sanji pulls his teeth free and licks the puncture wounds, focusing on healing them but letting it sting a little now that he knows about Zoro’s pain thing.

 

“That wasn’t much, you can’t be-” Zoro starts to protest. And he’s right, Sanji is nowhere near full, but that’s not why he’s stopped. He leans in and kisses Zoro properly, effectively shutting him up.

 

The kiss is good, slow but deep, the two of them fitting into an easy rhythm like everything else that they do. However much friction they generate between them usually, agitation that sparks into arguments and fights, he can never truly deny that it’s because they fit so close to each other. This is no different.

 

Both of Zoro’s hands are on Sanji’s hips now, holding him down a little tighter than is needed, it’s not as if Sanji is going anywhere. Sanji breaks the kiss, feeling how hard Zoro is breathing.

 

“You taste like blood.” Zoro remarks.

 

“No shit, really? I can’t imagine why that would- mmph!” Sanji’s tirade is cut off by Zoro groaning and pulling him back for another kiss. Sanji frowns, that’s not fair, that was going to be a good rant too with lots of insults at Zoro.

 

Zoro’s hands pull at the bottom of Sanji’s pastel pink shirt, untucking it from his nice black jeans, the one with the bright orange stitching and pockets. He’s always thought that Nami would like them but when he wears them she always gets a slightly pained look, as if she disapproves somehow. Sanji has no idea why, surely it goes great with this shirt and, oh hey, that is definitely Zoro’s hands sneaking up under his shirt.

 

Zoro’s thumbs rub at his hipbones and the swordsman was right, he can still feel things and that feels nice.

 

“Talk to me, you’re harder to read now.” Zoro says, and he means since Sanji’s died. With no hitches of breath or flushing skin it must be difficult to tell his appreciation from apathy, especially as Sanji is trying not to look too needy here.

 

“That’s not my fault.” Sanji grouses out of habit.

 

“Less bitching more talking.” Zoro argues back. Sanji scowls at him but stubbornness isn’t going to get him felt up well so he’ll allow it.

 

“Feels good.” He says, closing his eyes. Partially to focus on the feel of Zoro touching him but also because talking about how Zoro touching him makes him feel is far too mortifying to do with eye contact.

 

Zoro bites Sanji’s neck lightly and Sanji makes an appreciative noise. Zoro goes a little harder and suddenly visions of the last thing that Sanji did before he died flashes before his eyes and he jolts away.

 

“Don’t do that. If you bite too hard or… or if you get my blood if your mouth you could die and I couldn’t-” Sanji says urgently.

 

“Okay, I won’t.” Zoro nods and kisses Sanji there instead, like an apology.

 

Zoro’s hands come up to Sanji’s shirt buttons and he flicks one open and moves to the next one, but his eyes are on Sanji, looking for approval or denial.

 

“You can if you want.” Is all that Sanji can bring himself to say.

 

“Do I ever do things that I don’t want to?” Zoro snorts. Sanji frowns and tries to come up with an argument against that.

 

“Sometimes you listen to Chopper and actually take it easy rather than ripping your stitches out but I guess that’s you not doing something that you want to.” Sanji thinks aloud as Zoro gets to the last button and slides Sanji’s shirt off so that it hits the ground at Zoro’s feet.

 

Zoro turns them so that Sanji is now laying flat on the padded seat of the bench with Zoro over him. He leans up and kisses the other man but Zoro breaks away before too long, letting his free hand roam Sanji’s chest. It’s not fair though, Sanji wants to get his hands on Zoro too. He reaches up, starting to slide his hands under Zoro’s shirt but Zoro bats his hands away.

 

“Quit it, I want to concentrate on this.” the other man says firmly and runs his hand up over Sanji’s pectorals, his thumb on Sanji’s nipple. He’s surprised when Sanji bursts out laughing.

 

“What?” Zoro demands, confusion written all over his dumb face. It only makes Sanji laugh harder.

 

“Your face, you look like you do when you’re practicing with your swords. This isn’t training, moron.” Sanji snickers. Zoro’s far too intense for his own good, it’s too funny.

 

“It is, I need to know what works, how else can I be the best?” Zoro says petulantly, compelling Sanji to laugh again.

 

“Better than who? Idiot.” Sanji asks, feeling kind of fond of the moron. This is just so like Zoro.

 

“Everyone. Including myself from before.” Zoro snorts like it’s completely fucking obvious.

 

“Now shut up and talk to me already.” Zoro says irritably and leans down to kiss Sanji’s adam’s apple.

 

“Did you hear what you-” Sanji says trying not to laugh.

 

“You KNOW what I meant. Good or not?” Zoro growls and- yeah, ok Zoro sounding kind of feral like that so close to Sanji’s weak spots is kind of working for him.

 

“Good.” Sanji answers quickly, his hands reaching for Zoro’s hips and pulling him a little closer.

 

Zoro continues his mission of exploring Sanji’s body and noting what seems to work and what doesn’t. Sanji wants to be into it, he does, but he’s not. Or rather he isn’t into it in the right way. Normally by now he’d be breathing heavy, his skin would be flushing red because he always blushed too easily and now he doesn’t. He’d have butterflies and he’d be in a haze of hormones and in a happy glow at the action of touching and being touched. He’d be more vocal. He was never a big talker in bed, much less a screamer but the suddenly lack of sound is jarring to him. He’s not panting when something makes him breathless, there’s no needy whines or happy sighs coming from him. It’s dumb but because he can’t hear how much he’s liking what Zoro’s doing he’s unsure of whether he does. It’s not to say that what Zoro’s doing doesn’t feel good because it does but he’s also not sure if it does. None of this makes any sense.

 

“I can hear your brain whirring you know.” Zoro says against the corner of Sanji’s mouth.

 

“Ugh, I’m sorry, I’m ruining this.” Sanji groans, pressing his knuckles into his temples. He’s being so stupid.

 

“Shut up, this worked for you fine before you started worrying about it.” the other man points out. Sanji glares up at Zoro. It’s not his fault that this is difficult, Zoro’s got no right to tell him off for that! He levers his knee and flexes his hip, bucking Zoro’s sharply to the ground and following him, landing on his hands and knees above Zoro.

 

“Well maybe you’d like a refresher course of me handing you your ass in a fight too to make it more like then.” Sanji threatens, showing his teeth angrily but Zoro’s eyes fix on them and Sanji can see that it’s not so much a threat as it is a promise for things that Zoro wants.

 

“Biting you isn’t a threat any more is it?” Sanji groans despairingly.

 

“No.” Zoro replies in a way that’s slightly breathless.

 

Sanji rolls his eyes but leans down and bites him anyway because he’s still hungry and Zoro clearly wants it too. He gets plenty of confirmation of that when Zoro’s hands cling tight to Sanji’s hips and a flood of enjoyment flows through Sanji’s mouth on Zoro’s blood. He swallows slowly, enjoying it like wine, keeping the bite shallow to drag it out longer.

 

He leans over Zoro, bracing himself on his right forearm, leaving him stable at Zoro’s neck but letting his left hand freely wander. So this time when he slides his hand up inside Zoro’s shirt there’s no protests at all. He maps out muscles as he goes and tastes the way that Zoro’s blood changes. He supposes that it’s hormones or something like it, but it’s also more emotional too. He can feel Zoro’s reactions to it and it’s far easier to determine what works for Zoro and what doesn’t than Zoro’s dumb ‘good/bad’ questioning that he was doing earlier. He knows that he shouldn’t go too far with it this time, he’s still freaked out by his own lack of physical response, despite enjoying what he and Zoro had been doing earlier. That said, feeling what Zoro’s feeling as he feeds off of him makes him feel more alive and physical than he has since he’s died. It’s addicting to feel that again and the temptation is to go as far as he can.

 

But how far can he actually go? Physically speaking of course. For all of Robin and Franky’s joking and teasing suggestions and Zoro’s smug reminder that he’s still got enough equipment to make this thing work he’s not sure. It’s not something that he wants to find out right now and the whole thought is freaking him out and frankly pulling him out of the amazing sensation of being connected to Zoro’s system.

 

He tries to shake the thought from his head and stops feeling Zoro up. He curls one leg under Zoro’s raised one and drapes himself over the other man, getting as close as he physically can and effectively becoming the worlds shittiest blanket. It’s not like he’d even keep Zoro warm. He tangles his other hand in Zoro’s hair and tries to calm down.

 

When Zoro’s arms wrap around his waist and Zoro’s head tilts to the side to bump against Sanji’s the cook starts wondering if this feeding connection goes both ways. Either way a wave of contentment, home and safe rushes through him and makes him melt.

 

He’s starting to get full though and as nice as this is and as much as he wants to keep drinking and keep this feeling alive he probably shouldn’t make the other man pass out. Chopper might kill him. Again. He pulls his fangs free and licks Zoro all better, trying to give Zoro back a taste of the happy buzz that the other man has either deliberately or accidentally given him.

 

Zoro doesn’t let go of him after that, the two of them stay tangled up on the floor. Sanji feels lazy and actually tired for once, he might even sleep. Zoro presses a slightly drunkenly uncoordinated kiss to Sanji’s cheekbone and the cook responds by scratching Zoro’s hair sleepily.

 

Brook had said that it takes a while to learn how to sleep again, to train a nervous system that no longer has the right neurochemicals to make him tired or need sleep at all. So maybe it’s Zoro’s ability to sleep anywhere anytime that’s getting into him or perhaps it’s just real sleep, but the pair of them end up dead to the world, literally and figuratively.

 

Sanji only wakes up when Usopp comes into the room, banging the trap door loud enough to startle both of them awake.

 

“Oh GOD! Is Zoro dead or passed out or something!?” Usopp squawks far too loudly for Sanji’s comfort, his eyes saucer wide and panicked. Sanji squints at him, this doesn’t seem like Usopp’s genuine fear of him. More like Usopp’s fear of loud noises, like the toaster going off when he walks past it, or paranoid alertness after ghost stories. Sanji snorts and drops his head back on Zoro’s shoulder, ignoring the sharpshooter entirely.

 

“Go away. Mine.” Zoro grumbles sleepily and rolls on top of Sanji, crushing him against the floor. Sanji flails his arms but Zoro doesn’t get the hint and get off of him.

 

“Moss brain, you’re crushing me. I can’t breathe!” Sanji complains loudly in Zoro’s ear.

 

“You DON’T breathe.” Zoro points out grumpily and tightens his arms around Sanji’s midsection more. The cook feels his lungs squish a little more.

 

“That’s not the point. You’re crushing my ribs with your big stupid body.” He snaps, shoving at Zoro’s shoulder.

 

“So grow new ribs. I’m comfortable.” Zoro argues back. Sanji hears the sound of Usopp retreating out of the room, clearly not wanting to get caught in the fallout of this argument.

 

“No, get OFF.” Sanji snarls, shoving back again. The stupid swordsman suddenly turns loose limbed and awkwardly heavy, like a cat that doesn’t want to be picked up. Zoro’s not just being unhelpful, he’s actively making this harder for Sanji. The problem is that Sanji CAN get Zoro off of him but getting a power level between a light shove and kicking him through the roof was hard enough before he had freakish undead strength.

 

“I swear I’m going to kick you through the roof and into the sea and you’ll drown and I won’t feel bad at all.” He promises.

 

“Since when do you waste food?” Zoro grins at him smugly, actually pulling back a little so that he can get a good look at the entire level of smugness on Zoro’s face. Sanji growls and jerks forward, still faster than Zoro. He bites him, right on the eyebrow, one long thin fang going through his eyebrow and out the other side. That makes Zoro yell. He didn’t even bother numbing that one much, how careless of him.

 

“Your new piercing looks good on you.” Sanji retorts smugly.

 

“I am going to kill you.” the swordsman threatens.

 

“But I’m already dead.” he grins back.

 

“Do not start with the skull jokes again unless you want me to crucify you to the floor and leave you there.” Zoro snarls back at him, holding a hand over his bleeding eyebrow. A drop of it lands on Sanji’s chin and he catches some of it with his tongue.

 

He relents, deciding that Zoro has probably had enough and it’s also a shame to waste food. He leans up, pushes Zoro’s hand aside and licks over his bite mark. The bleeding stops and everything knits back together good as new. He pulls back and licks the inside of Zoro’s hand, tracing Zoro’s life line and the pads of his fingers. The dumbass swordsman looks conflicted, probably torn between indignant at his injury and liking Sanji’s treatment more than he should. Sanji mysteriously feels no remorse for that.

 

“Done, all fixed. Unfortunately I couldn’t save your face, you’re still ugly.” Sanji says smartly, relaxing on the floor under Zoro who is propped up above him.

 

“Yeah, well,” Zoro frowns, trying to come up with something clever, “you’re the one who keeps kissing it.”

 

“I’m a saint, what can I say? Taking on the poor charity cases, the lepers, you know.” He sighs with far too much theatre to be believable. Zoro punches him in the ribs and Sanji cracks up laughing.

 

“I hate you.” the swordsman spits with a scowl, sitting up and glaring a hole in the wall.

 

“Oh Zoro, you wound me. Thankfully I don’t bleed.” He retorts.

 

“Don’t.” Zoro grumbles.

 

“Please, baby, you’re breaking my heart. Only, it’s already broken because it doesn’t work.” He adds in, clutching his chest dramatically.

 

“I’m going.” the other man snaps, standing up.

 

“Over my dead body.” he quips brightly at Zoro who is actually standing over him.

 

“I’m not talking to you.” Zoro groans, making his way over to the trap door and climbing down.

 

“Zoro, no! Seeing you leave just leaves me cold!” He shouts after him.

 

“YOHOHOHO! Good one Sanji!” Brook calls out from the lawn deck.

 

“You shut up too!” Zoro yells down at him.

 

“Zoro, that cuts deep. Though I don’t have any skin, YOHOHOHOHO!” Brook trills loudly.

 

“You know, even though you say such mean things, you still look so dashing from this angle. Be still my beating heart- oh wait! It already is!” Sanji cackles madly.

 

“That’s it, I’m throwing myself overboard.” Zoro declares, striding across the lawn deck to the railing.

 

“YOHOHOHOHO! If I jumped in too would it be the dead sea?” Brook laughs loudly.

 

“No, but you’d be sleeping with the fishes.” Sanji grins, dropping straight from the crows nest to the floor behind Zoro. Zoro looks at him, thoroughly betrayed.

 

“I am never talking to either of you again.” Zoro groans, walking off to the men’s quarters.

 

“Then it would be silent as the grave, wouldn’t you say Sanji?” Brook says, nudging Sanji in the side.

 

“Brook, calm down, you’re too funny. I’m dying over here.” Sanji says, barely containing his laughter long enough to speak.

 

Zoro flips them both off and slams the door, leaving the two deceased members of the crew doubled up in laughter, clutching each other to stay upright.

 

“Oh God, does that ever stop being funny?” Sanji asks, a giggle still escaping him as he tries to talk.

 

“Fifty years and counting, I think it’s still got some… life in it yet. YOHOHOHOHO!” Brook replies, laughing loudly. A muffled scream of frustration comes from the direction of the men’s quarters, making Sanji burst out into hysterics again.

 

Off to the side Nami, Robin and Franky are sitting and staring at them, their game of cards interrupted.

 

“I want to say something about how nuts they sound but I’m afraid they’ll turn it into a pun.” Franky says quietly, but Sanji’s hearing is better than that.

 

“You’re dead right.” He grins at them and Brook slaps him heartily on the shoulder as he laughs.

 

“I think it’s sweet how they’re bonding like this.” Robin says with a soft smile, watching them with her chin in more hands than she should strictly have.

 

“They could bond more quietly.” Nami replies flatly, looking unimpressed at the pair of them.

 

“But Nami, this is a bond for life that we’re forming here.” Brook says in his most serious voice.

 

“Only, we’re dead!” Sanji finishes for him.

 

“I just remembered that I have work to do.” Nami says, standing up and putting her cards on her chair.

 

“Wait, does this mean that you’re dropping out of the game?” Franky asks with sudden urgency.

 

“Maybe” Nami answers with the most pained wince that Sanji has ever seen. He suddenly feels bad about the jokes.

 

“Well, how long do you think they can keep going with this?” Nami wonders aloud.

 

“Oh, I think they’re dead-set on doing this for as long as possible.” Franky suddenly chips in, flicking his sunglasses down over his eyes.

 

“Okay, no, I’m leaving.” Nami says in disgust, walking off.

 

“Watch my money Robin.” She calls over her shoulder.

 

“Of course.” Robin smiles back.

 

“Come on, come on, hit me.” Franky says urgently.

 

“Three.” Robin says, turning the card over.

 

“YES! 21! GIMMIE! I won a card game against Nami!” Franky yells in awe, pumping his fists in the air in utter joy. Sanji’s not sure he’s ever heard of anyone doing that, though he’s always been puzzled as to how someone who rarely wears shirts with sleeves always seems to have so many cards up them. Robin smiles and slides Franky’s winnings over to him, which whilst it’s not all of the cash pot it is quite a substantial amount.

 

“I’m shocked.” Brook says in surprise.

 

“Calm down, you might have a heart attack.” Sanji responds after a beat.

  
“Although I don’t have a heart, YOHOHOHOHOHO!” Brook says, exploding into laughter once more. 


	9. Chapter 9

At first Sanji doesn’t make the connection. He finds himself feeling… odd. That’s the best description that he can come up with for it. Sometimes for no reason he feels sleepy, then out of the blue he’ll feel really pumped up, like he can run a million miles and wants to do it right now. He also gets spells where he wants to burst out laughing or where he suddenly feels more than a little sappy in a warm and fuzzy kind of way.

 

He’s standing in the kitchen delicately frying some asparagus in butter and that’s been the first food that he really wishes he could eat. It’s a little recipe that was one of the Baratie specials, it reminds him of home and that shitty old geezer’s restaurant. It’s more homesickness than it is an appetite but it’s still disconcerting. He wants to eat it for the connection more than anything but he knows full well that the moment that food is down his throat it’ll be making a return appearance before too long. An unforgivable waste and frankly more than a little sad.

 

The feeling hits him so quickly that the laughter just bubbles out of his chest, leaving him chuckling to himself alone in the quiet of the kitchen with no one around and no apparent reason for his mirth. Great, he just needs to be going crazy as well as being dead, that’s an amazing combination.

 

It’s only when Zoro’s laughter rings out, though muted through the kitchen walls that Sanji’s bullshit senses start to go off. He takes the asparagus off of the heat, giving it one last stir to make sure that the residual heat of the pan doesn't singe it. With that done he pokes his head out of the door, glaring despite the amusement tickling deep in his insides. Usopp has Luffy in a headlock and is giving him the noogie of a lifetime, his knuckles scratching into his rubber scalp. Luffy’s hat is safely on the floor at Zoro’s feet, but the really funny thing is that Luffy has his arm stretched out behind Usopp’s back and is giving the sharpshooter the same treatment in return. This is apparently the funniest thing that Zoro has ever seen in his life if the way he’s laughing is any indication.

 

“OI! Zoro, you think that’s funny?” Sanji demands sharply, pausing Zoro’s laughing and making the others look at him.

 

“What’s it to you?” Zoro retorts and the feeling in Sanji’s chest dissipates. Hm.

 

Sanji looks around and sees Chopper sitting not too far from the kitchen door, previously engrossed in a medical book but now looking at Sanji with curiosity. That’ll do. He snags Chopper up by the scruff of his neck and tosses him in Zoro’s direction. The swordsman flails and catches the small reindeer who is flailing around in panic. Large strong arms wrap around the now wailing kid and yeah, a huge surge of fierce protectiveness and irritation flares up in Sanji. That’s not his.

 

“Holy fucking shit. You have got to be shitting me with this supernatural bullshit.” Sanji groans, leaping the railing and landing near Zoro.

 

“Sorry Chopper, I just needed to test something.” Sanji apologises, crouching down and beeping the doctor’s little blue nose.

 

“Test what? How well Chopper flies?” Usopp asks incredulously.

 

“No, I needed to get a reaction out of Zoro.” Sanji sighs, wrapping his arms around his knees and looking Zoro in the eyes. The other man looks understandably puzzled.

 

“I can feel you.” He explains, rubbing his forehead in stress. He doesn’t need this crap, what even is the point of being able to do this?

 

“Pervert cook.” Zoro snorts derisively.

 

“Wh- I didn’t mean like that!” Sanji snaps indignantly, shifting his balance and delivering a kick in the direction of Zoro’s head. The moss brain is unrattled though and takes the blow full on with his dumb forehead, thick skulled idiot indeed.

 

“I mean, I’m feeling what you’re feeling. Either that or asparagus is way funnier than it should be and I feel protective about Chopper even when I’ve just thrown him at you.” He elaborates.

 

“You’re getting a kind of feedback from Zoro then? But not the rest of us?” Chopper asks with bright eyed curiosity.

 

“I don’t think so, it just seems to be Zoro radio that I’m tuned into.” he says, shaking his head.

 

“Wah, that’s SO COOL! Can you tell what I’m thinking? Or what Zoro’s thinking? Zoro, think something right now, Captain’s orders.” Luffy yells gleefully, pointing in Zoro’s face. The swordsman’s brow furrows in irritation.

 

“He’s thinking that you’re a moron, but I don’t need to be a mind reader to tell you that. No, I’m not getting words or even ideas just… strong feelings I guess.” Sanji answers, thumping his fist into the top of Luffy’s head.

 

“A symbiotic relationship, hm, that makes sense.” Robin says from behind him. Sanji leaps to his feet in shock, a flare of fear inside of him. It’s just Robin though.

 

“I think that’s the first time I didn’t hear someone coming up on me since I died.” Sanji mutters in embarassed explanation. Robin smiles catlike at him. Of course, if anyone was going to get the drop on him it would be his lovely light footed angel Robin.

 

“Thank you for the compliment Sanji. As I was saying, it makes sense for Sanji to start developing this sort of thing.” She says easily, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world.

 

“It does?” Sanji and Zoro echo as one.

 

“But why now? Sanji eating more frequently maybe?” Chopper theorises with a thoughtful rub of his furry chin.

 

“I think perhaps it’s more likely that Zoro is Sanji’s only food source, or at least the one one that he chooses to use. If we were talking about animals there are many that depend on each other to survive, often exchanging food for protection. Zoro provides Sanji with food in the form of his blood and Sanji becomes attuned to Zoro’s emotions, something large like panic or fear would register and Sanji could protect him.” Robin explains academically.

 

“I don’t need protecting!” Zoro protests angrily.

 

“Yeah, he really doesn’t. Except from himself maybe.” Sanji snorts and Zoro punches him in the arm hard enough that Sanji feels the tell tale tingle of his system rushing to repair what would probably have been a nasty bruise. He sticks his tongue out at the bastard.

 

“Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that the instinct isn’t there. It’s interesting because this implies that vampirism is perhaps another evolved human state. Historically speaking there are plenty of legends world wide which refer to creatures that siphon energy or blood from their hosts. The details change from telling to telling but it’s likely that they refer to the same creature, people like Sanji. It really is very fascinating.” Robin says, her face glowing with the same academic interest that Sanji has seen a hundred times, both only this bright when she’s looking at poneglyphs.

 

“Fascinating, so Sanji may well be another branch of the Homo tree.” Chopper agrees.

 

“Homo what?” Zoro says suspiciously, making Sanji snort into his hand. He’s pretty sure that Zoro has a completely different idea as to what Chopper is saying, but the doctor doesn’t stop to explain.

 

Sanji settles down, sitting cross legged on the floor. If this is a permanent thing then it seems like an awful violation of Zoro’s privacy and yet another thing that’s weird about him. As Zoro pointed out too, it’s entirely unnecessary as well, if he could think of anyone on the crew who needs protecting the least then Zoro would be in a tie with Luffy for needing no protection at all.

 

“I don’t feel fascinating.” Sanji mumbles under his breath. He glances at Zoro sharply, if he starts getting waves of pity off of the other man then he will literally throw himself overboard and wait for his corpse to be dinner for a sea king. He knows that Zoro wouldn’t voice that kind of thing but whether he feels pity for him is an entirely different matter…

 

“Quit whining dartboard, aren’t you gonna make some crack about it being easier to find me if you can feel me from a distance? That thing has gotta have a range right?” Zoro says and instead of pity he finds a undercurrent of irritation hitting his brain. There’s no pity there, or none that he can sense.

 

“Hm, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Maybe my days of losing you on islands are done!” He laughs loudly and beams at Zoro. Maybe... maybe this won’t be so bad after all.  

 

“I wonder what the name for that subspecies of human would be.” Robin muses, totally ignoring the pair of them as she often does when they bicker.

 

“It would help to know when the two species diverged, but there’s no naming convention that I know of that works for species being able to hop from one to the other. Half Breeds of species are one thing but this I don’t know. I’m not a biologist anyway but still, it’s very interesting on a scientific level.” The doctor says thoughtfully as he peers at Sanji like his species name might suddenly appear under him on a plaque.

 

“Well, as much as I love being your science project, which is not at all, I have cooking to do.” He says standing up. The feeling of irritation prompts him to reach for his cigarettes and sure, he doesn’t crave them but this feels like a special occasion. A clash of fuck vampire powers and fuck being Chopper’s science project intersecting like this means that he deserves one.

 

He flicks his lighter and breathes in, pulling the smoke deep down into lungs that no longer need air at all. Once in the kitchen he blows it in a long stream up at the ceiling and scowls at it. He just keeps getting weirder and weirder doesn’t he? Sanji shakes his head, Zoro’s right and so is Brook, he needs to stop pitying himself. Still, his stupid body could make that goal a little easier couldn’t it?

 

Sanji doesn’t know what he’s supposed to call Zoro. Well, he has plenty of names for the idiot; mossball, marimo, algae head, shitty swordsman, seaweed brain… he could go on. But specifically he doesn’t know if the other man is his boyfriend or whether it would be presumptuous to call him that. In fairness it’s not like he’s talking to anyone about it. He’s of the position that certain members of the crew are going to know already, Chopper of course does after Sanji’s… problem related freak out. Robin and Nami, much to his despair, are both almost certainly perceptive enough to work it out.

 

As for the others, who knows what they know or think? Sanji doesn’t much care about their opinions and he’s sure that no one on the crew will have a problem with it of course, though he’s mildly curious as to who might know. Usopp walked in on them sprawled on the floor but maybe he thought that was dinner time for him, though it’d be hard to explain Sanji’s lack of shirt. And as for Brook and Franky, well they gave him that considerably traumatising talk about sex before. That kind of thing would have been a little off topic if Sanji hadn’t been considering using his dick any time soon. Shit. The only person on the crew that doesn’t have a pretty sure shot of knowing about the two of them is Luffy, but he can be annoyingly perceptive when he wants to be. Damn, they all know don’t they? Shit.

 

But even so, he’s not sure that boyfriend is the word. If he said it to Zoro how would the other man react? He knows that what they have isn’t something casual and meaningless but is boyfriend to official? He’s never had a boyfriend. He’s had girlfriends and one night stands with guys but never a boyfriend. Is the protocol different? Even if it’s the same he’s pretty sure that if he presented Zoro with a dozen roses the man would punch him in the face. That might be useful if he ever wants to really piss the other man off but it’s hardly what Zoro would be likely to consider a romantic gesture. Maybe he should-

 

“What are you even thinking about? You look so tense you might shit.” Zoro suddenly says behind him. Sanji groans and bangs his head despairingly on the railing of the ship. If boyfriend is the right word then he cannot believe that he is dating this tactless idiot.

 

“I was thinking about kicking you in the face, why don’t you come here and make my wish come true?” He replies, glaring at Zoro over his shoulder.

 

“Maybe later, I just woke up.” Zoro grunts and drops down to sit next to him, his legs dangling out over the side of the ship next to Sanji’s.

 

Sanji tilts his head and reaches out with the powers that he’s had for the last few days. He feels out that cloud of sensation that he’s started attributing to Zoro and has a look at it.

 

“You still feel kind of tired to me.” He comments, side eyeing Zoro. If this is a iron deficiency thing then he’s going to have to start giving Zoro more meat, no matter how much Luffy bitches about it.

 

“Tough workout this morning.” Zoro says with a shrug and a little flutter of pride seeps through to Sanji from Zoro. He relaxes a little, that’s normal for Zoro and no reason for him to panic about the man’s diet. He lets himself fall back onto the soft grass and stretches his arms up over his head. His shirt rides up a little but he doesn’t mind at all, it’s a nice warm afternoon and he’ll take any chance he can get to warm up and feel a little more human again.

 

Zoro breathes in a little sharply and holds it for a second before huffing the air out of his nose. He hears the man’s teeth clack together as he does it, Zoro had his mouth open but decided not to say whatever it was that he was going to say. Goodness, is the idiot finally developing some tact? Wonders never cease.

 

He unbuttons his shirt a little at the top, the collar has been rubbing at the black veined bite mark that got Sanji into this mess in the first place. Despite all of his healing powers it’s still never properly healed and now and then it still aches if something worries at it, like this goddamn shirt collar for one. He rolls his shoulder in an effort to dissipate the mild ache, it’s better since the skin stopped being so ragged but having the mark and the black toxic looking lines there still bothers him.

 

He hears Zoro do the open and close mouth thing again, killing whatever he was going to say. Okay, twice in two minutes is just weird.

 

“What?” Sanji asks flatly, not even bothering to open his eyes.

 

“What’s your problem? I didn’t say anything.” Zoro snaps back defensively.

 

“Yeah, I’ve heard you not saying whatever it is twice. If you didn’t snap your yap shut each time you chicken out then maybe I wouldn’t know, but you’ve never been subtle in your life have you?” Sanji snorts. It’s nice now, snorting to show his displeasure or mocking something. He doesn’t have to breathe so now everyone knows that he’s done it for that reason, it’s great.

 

Breath, jaw closing and… oh is he grinding his teeth now too?  Sanji must have really hit a nerve.

 

“Either say it or don’t mossy.” Sanji says in a tone far more uncaring than he really feels. Honestly he’s burning with curiosity here.

 

“I was thinking…” Zoro begins hesitantly.

 

“They said that the Grand Line was an unbelievable place but I’m not sure I believe this.” He shoots back, pushing himself up on his elbows and dropping one knee to the side so that he can see the other man’s body language more clearly. Zoro doesn’t say an awful lot but sometimes how and where he’s tense can give a lot more away than his words do. Though with his creepy empathy thing he might not need that.

 

Zoro says nothing but pulls his legs back from the side of the ship to turn and look at Sanji face on. Zoro’s on his knees so at least he’s not towering over Sanji and looking down at him, but it’s clear that the look on Zoro’s face is meant to be intimidating. Sanji is not even vaguely intimidated.

 

“Are you going to get to the point or shall I go back to sunbathing?” He grins with a little wiggle of his shoulders and his eyebrows, teasing Zoro will never ever get old.

 

There’s a flicker of something from Zoro’s direction that catches Sanji’s interest though. It’s not the miasma of irritation that Sanji’s all but tuned out from the other man. He agitates Zoro so much that it’s basically become background noise. He’s pretty sure that he’d learnt to ignore that one before he even knew what it was he was picking up. This time he mentally looks a little closer and there’s something new there. He reaches out to touch it and it feels familiar, a little glow of something in his gut that his a hint of fizz to it.

 

“Just that it’s been a while since the island.” Zoro says slowly, his face carefully blank.

 

“Do you mean the one where you picked that book up and I almost died again or do you mean the one where I stole your swords in a fight and you ripped my shirt off to here?” Sanji questions, pulling his shirt up to the dumb level that Zoro had left that one with, the goddamn thing was more of a crop top after that fight than it was a shirt.

 

The glow in Zoro burns brighter and when Sanji really focuses on it he feels that it feels… well, hot is the only way to explain it. It feels like it’s getting stronger but damn if it doesn’t feel familiar. Huh… could it be?

 

“The second.” Zoro answers, seemingly ignoring whatever feeling he has inside of him.

 

“Yeah, okay, it’s been a while. What, you want a rematch or something? Because for a serious fight I think Franky will shit a brick if we do that on the ship.” Sanji says with a fang baring grin. If this is competitiveness that he’s feeling then that’ll do the trick. But no… Zoro just flicks to that ‘why do I even talk to you?’ scowl that Sanji knows by heart but whatever it is remains the same. Huh.

 

It suddenly kicks up again and Sanji realises that he’s idly tonguing his fangs, a habit that he’s not quite dropped since they grew in and Zoro’s stopped talking. It’s as if the moss ball’s kelp brain has stopped partway through their conversation. So, not competitiveness then, lust.

 

Sanji flicks himself back up onto his knees and leans right into Zoro’s space, his arms draped around the other man’s neck and oh yeah that is lust that he’s getting off of him.

 

“Oh, I see what you’re saying. You’re talking about me getting in your pants, huh?” Sanji purrs at the other man, relishing in the way Zoro’s eyes go dark with desire for a change instead of the dangerous pre-fight darkness that Sanji has seen so many times before. Yeah, that feeling is absolutely lust. It’s kind of flattering in a weird sort of way. He knows that Zoro is attracted to him, it’s obvious after what they’ve done and said, but feeling Zoro wanting him is totally different. He’s almost preening himself because of it and he can’t help but wonder if he starts “accidentally” dropping things around Zoro and bending over and stretching just so if he’ll be able to provoke the other man into thinking about him like that enough that Sanji will be able to sense it. If he can then Sanji might be crushed under the weight of his own ego.

 

“I was meaning about getting into yours actually.” The swordsman responds flatly and Sanji suddenly doesn’t feel so smug.

 

“Right now there’s not a lot to get into, or nothing of interest I guess.” Sanji mutters ruefully and starts to disentangle himself from Zoro, suddenly not feeling as good about Zoro wanting him as he had before. Sure the other man said that he hadn’t got a problem with it but that still somehow doesn’t feel right. Zoro isn’t a selfish man by any means and being in a relationship where he can’t please his partner surely can’t work, can it?

 

“Oi, get back here.” Zoro says sharply, catching Sanji’s arms and not letting him wriggle away.

 

“That’s not fair, you’ve given me one half assed try that you distracted me from and Usopp interrupted.” Zoro says firmly, making Sanji squirm and suddenly become very interested in a patch of grass off to the side. Zoro sighs and lets him go.

 

“If you don’t want to do this or you can’t because you can’t get over the idea that you being dead makes your body different to how it was when you were alive then fine and that’s not your fault but just tell me if that’s what it is.” Zoro says. The worst thing about it is that he doesn’t sound angry, there’s no irritation or malice in his voice, he’s not arguing. He sounds calm, reasonable, sympathetic even. Still not pitying, just asking Sanji to be straightforward with him.

 

Sanji bites his lip hard enough for his fang to go through it, but it heals right away so it doesn’t matter. What’s he supposed to say to this? Whatever it is silence is clearly not the wrong answer because Zoro is nodding with a sigh and more than just a hint of disappointment on his face.

 

“No, don’t! I want this!” Sanji blurts out loudly.

 

Zoro’s eyes snap back to him at the loud and bold admission and though it’s something that he wants to hear his face takes on this smug look, like he’s managed to one up Sanji somehow.

 

“You do huh?” Zoro smirks at him.

 

“Yes, get over yourself. But, look, just because I want something doesn’t mean that it’s possible.” He admits unhappily.

 

“Since when has that stopped you?” the other man points out and Sanji wants to argue but, well, All Blue. Zoro has a point, as much as it pains Sanji to admit it.

 

“Alright, alright. I wish this wasn’t so shit, if we’d realised this before I died then we could have…” Sanji groans, falling back onto his butt and sighing. He can just imagine how good things could have been if he’d only looked at Zoro as someone that he could really be with.

 

“Fuck the past.” the moss brained moron says with a nod of his head like he’s just vomited up the most profound fucking wisdom going.

 

“Just because neither of us knows how to get you off now doesn’t mean we can’t become experts at it. You knew jack shit about cooking when you were a kid but now…” Zoro trails off with a shrug.

 

“But now what? Now I’m the best? Oh Zoro, was there a compliment somewhere in that wave of idiocy? Are you thinking nice things about me? Do you like me?” Sanji teases, watching the embarrassed colour that Zoro goes.

 

“No!” Zoro responds, his reaction knee jerk.

 

“Oh you do. Do I make your heart go pitter-patter? You’ve got a crush on me huh?” Sanji teases. It’s dumb really, he knows that Zoro wants him, that he respects him, that he’s attracted to him. But if you drag fluttery mushy feelings into the mix the man gets mortified, it’s great.

 

“I’ll get a crush on your FACE.” Zoro snaps back. “With my fist.” He adds quickly, as if it wasn’t clear.

 

Sanji falls back and howls with laughter as Zoro turns redder and redder by the second which doesn’t help Sanji stop laughing at him. Eventually Zoro’s indignant silence forces Sanji to stop laughing and, with that distraction completed, his mind gets dragged back to the concepts of Zoro and sex in the most unpleasant way. It feels inescapable, like a whirlpool that he can’t sail out of the reach of. Nami probably could, be he can’t.

 

He sighs, deliberately of course, and allows himself to return back on track to the conversation. He owes it to have this conversation rather than skirt around it and cause misunderstandings. He wants this with Zoro but Zoro can’t be in his head and Sanji knows that if he was still alive he couldn’t imagine what it would be like for someone in his position. He couldn’t have imagined how it would be to be alive but not, to have a body that you could feel things with but didn’t work right or accurately report things to his mind. So in all fairness he cannot expect the same of Zoro.

 

“It just feels so wrong. When we were on that island, if I’d been normal then who knows how carried away we could have got? I certainly hadn’t intended on stopping any time soon, not until I realised how wrong things were with me. But I’ve got no idea how to make this work. I am interested, I want this but none of my system is working. It’s all in my head. Even when shit feels nice it doesn’t… I don’t know.” He admits miserably. He picks at the grass under him with his hands, ripping the blades in half and squinching them between his fingers. He can’t quite bring himself to look at Zoro because it’s nothing that the other man has done, it’s really not. But he couldn’t blame Zoro if he took this in a bad way, implying somehow that it was because he isn’t good enough.

 

Instead when he finally does force himself into looking up at Zoro again the swordsman is sitting there with his chin in his hands thoughtfully. His brow furrowed as if this is some problem that he can just force his way through.

 

“Maybe you need to stop thinking about why it won’t work and just see if it does. Besides, you’ve not gone anywhere near me since you got your weird mind-reading thing.” Zoro says after a few long moments.

 

“Maybe you’re able to just stop thinking like that but I’m not.” Sanji snipes back but Zoro doesn’t rise to the bait and keeps staring at Sanji, waiting for more of an explanation.

 

“Ugh. I don’t know, okay? Everything is so weird right now and this thing between us feels… important. I don’t want to screw it up.” Sanji admits, staring down at the grass. Maybe he can admit that it’s not just Zoro who is uncomfortable with this feelings crap.

 

“What if I’ve got other powers and I’m making you want this or something? Or if the first time I bit you I changed your feelings or-” Sanji starts to babble. It’s bad enough that he can’t stop himself from snooping on Zoro’s thoughts and the fact that he keeps giving into temptation and taking a more detailed peek. It’s fucking unethical is what it is and frankly he shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea that-

 

“Yeah, no. I wanted this before that. Even if you were screwing with my head you’re not doing it deliberately. Who knows, maybe I’m controlling you with my devil’s fruit powers.” Zoro says with a shrug.

 

“You don’t have devil’s fruit powers.” Sanji says flatly.

 

“I might do, we don’t know.” the other man answers airily.

 

“You’re just mocking me now, you asshole.” Sanji snarls back at him. How dare Zoro do this to him when he was sharing his fears and his emotions and the bastard just mocks him.

 

“No, just because I have absolutely no proof of my powers to control your brain it doesn’t mean that they’re not there. So obviously I should never talk to you again, actually, that sounds like a great plan. Later.” Zoro says with a dismissive snort, stands up and walks off.

 

“You’re an asshole and I hate you!” Sanji yells after him but Zoro just waves back without even looking around.

 

Sanji grits his teeth and shuffles back to the railing to glare at the sea. Stupid Zoro and his stupid thought out arguments. Sanji thunks his head against the railing. In all honesty he really is just freaked out about his own biology.

 

He looks over his shoulder but Zoro is gone. It’s probably a good thing too because Sanji wants to ask Zoro if things went further and Sanji panicked if he’d be okay with calling what they’re doing off. Not everything, or at least not right away. Though maybe if this relationship or whatever it is proves impossible then perhaps that too. It’d be a shit thing to ask the other man though, like Zoro would ever do something that Sanji didn’t want.

 

Okay, well, in fairness Zoro does lots of things that Sanji doesn’t want him to. He puts his feet on the kitchen table and his snores stupidly loudly when he sleeps and he leaves his socks on the floor in a way that Sanji is SURE is designed to trip him up and- Sanji snarls in irritation, God Zoro is so annoying. But… even so, Zoro wouldn’t ever ignore Sanji on something important, not like that.

 

Zoro’s right, he’s just got to try things out and see. Maybe he won’t want to do anything with Zoro, or it’ll feel really wrong or who knows what. But he’s got to stop guessing himself and just stop thinking about it, otherwise he’s backing out of something just because he thinks that he might back out or that it won’t work. If he’d backed out on his dream like that he’d… well… he’d probably wouldn’t have had his dream when he met Zeff so he’d be at the bottom of the ocean with everyone else on their respective ships. He needs to stop overthinking shit.

 

Now, all he needs to do is to work out how to stop thinking so much.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

It feels a little like every week Sanji finds something else that he misses about being alive. Right now that thing is alcohol. He’d tried some before in private of course, but it’d ended just as badly as him trying to drink more than the tiniest sip of water had. He’d drunk it and seen it again almost immediately.

 

The crew was having a beach party. It’s a fair assessment of their crew to say that they have a party whenever they can, they love fun and drinking together, it’s part of being on a crew and having a good time. When Sanji was a boy though Zeff used to tell him that pirates partied so much harder than regular people because they knew better than anyone that each time you raised a glass in celebration with a man could well be the last time that you did it. Knowing that any day could be their last, be it at the hands of their enemies, to the merciless Grand Line or, in Sanji’s case, a vampire bite meant that parties were held often and in full force. If any party was going to be their last one then it was going to be a goddamn great one. Even Nami wouldn’t complain about having to pay for restocking after a party, she knows all too well how quickly a life can be stolen.

 

Even so, watching his nakama drinking and laughing and having a good time is hard. Sure he’s laughing along with them and hearing Usopp’s outrageous stories, but not being able to eat or drink anything sucks. He always had a pretty decent alcohol tolerance, though nothing compared to the impossible levels of immunity that Nami and Zoro have. Even so he enjoyed getting drunk in the past, he Luffy and Usopp always had a great time. They’d drink and dance and sing and have a great time. Usually he’d break off from the group to pick a fight with Zoro just because he could, though his arguments whilst drunk weren’t quite as on point as they were sober.

 

He laughs as Usopp drunkenly elaborates on a story about how he learnt to shoot with a bow and arrow but was too good that for the sake of the world he threw his bow in the ocean and gave it up. He grins at the other man whilst Usopp goes on a more than tipsy aside about why the bow was so special, something to do with wood from a tree blessed by faeries. Out of habit Sanji reaches down to the sand by his foot which is right where he’d usually put his glass if they were drinking together on the beach, but of course he doesn’t have one there.

 

He leaves Usopp to his story and shambles over to Zoro to complain, if anyone will appreciate his pain at not being able to drink then it’ll be the moss brain. The man drinks like it’s going out of style. Not that he has a problem of course but Zoro doesn’t have a lot of luxuries or frivolities in his life, drinking is one of the few, so Sanji doesn’t really begrudge him it. Not unless it’s fodder for an argument and the kind of thing that he can kick Zoro out of his kitchen for because Sanji will take any excuse for that.

 

“I can’t drink.” Sanji whines petulantly. Dropping down onto the sand by Zoro’s feet and leaning his back against the large driftwood log that’s functioning as Zoro’s seat right now.

 

“More for me though.” Zoro says with absolutely no compassion.

 

“I hate you.” Sanji scowls up at him.

 

“Uh-huh.” Zoro grins with a hint of lecherousness to it, an expression that Sanji isn’t used to seeing on the other man and actually startles some laughter out of him to see it. Sanji looks up at the idiot, his idiot perhaps, and notices something. Zoro looks a little red on his cheeks and he looks more relaxed than usual.

 

“Holy shit are you actually drunk?” Sanji balks in shock.

 

“No, of course not.” Zoro says, sounding almost offended.

 

“If you think I can’t sober up like that if I needed to then-” Zoro says sharply, clearly taking offense.

 

“No, I’m not implying that you’re wasted, of course you can fight. But you’re not sober right now. You’re actually letting yourself be not sober.” Sanji points out, still in awe of the fact. Zoro has this freakish ability, one amongst many of Zoro’s freakish skills, to not be drunk unless he actually chooses to be.

 

“Yeah, well… there’s no one around for miles, so.” Zoro shrugs, glaring off at the dark horizon just in case someone might be sneaking up on them. Not that anyone would be able to do. Zoro’s got some of the keenest senses for trouble going and Sanji’s are just as good. Robin has got a sixth sense for things going wrong and more than enough experience in sneaking up on people to know if someone’s doing it to her. Between all of that and Sanji’s newfound super hearing, well, they’re safe as can be.

 

“You know, I ought to drink you seeing as I’m so cruelly deprived of drinking like the rest of you. I’m feeling left out, it’s so sad.” Sanji pouts, giving Zoro big sad eyes that make the swordsman laugh so loud that he snorts and Sanji briefly wonders why he’s attracted to this lunk head in the slightest.  

 

“Don’t laugh at me asshole, you’d complain if you couldn’t drink too.” Sanji snipes back grumpily.

 

“How can you complain that you’ve got nothing to drink when you have so much… whine?” Zoro says, his grin so wide it’s threatening to cut his head in half and Zoro is so pleased at his shitty pun that he looks like he could die from it. Zoro’s not usually the quick witted one so being able to make a joke like that off of the cuff is apparently deeply satisfying to the moron. What’s worse is that Zoro is laughing at his own joke like it’s the funniest thing that he’s ever heard.

 

Sanji scowls up at Zoro from the floor and when Zoro doesn’t stop laughing he leans over and bites the space just above Zoro’s knee, his right most fang sinking in just a few millimetres below the skin. It’s just enough to cause a bead of blood to well up and out of spite Sanji licks it up.

 

He jolts in surprise at the taste of Zoro. It’s so different to normal it’s almost exactly like…

 

“Holy shit marimo, you taste of alcohol!” Sanji exclaims, jerking to his knees and staring wide eyed at the other man.

 

“Of course… when you get drunk it’s because there’s a high alcohol level in… your… blood..” Sanji says slowly, the realisation dawning on him like a sunrise.

 

Zoro grunts thoughtfully, or at least as thoughtful as a grunt can ever be. But Zoro has a wide range of grunts and Sanji has been forced to learn many of them. The marimo takes a long swig of his alcohol, it’s neat rum because the man is inhuman and also Nami doesn’t like rum so she’s happier for him to drain their stock of that. Sanji is a little less so because there are a few dishes and marinades that he can make with rum but it’s not vital.

 

“So, if I let myself get drunk…” Zoro says slowly and takes another sip, his dark eyes watching Sanji.

 

“It’d be deeply unfair, I’d kick you and you’d probably taste more like that bottle of rum than your normal Zoro taste.” Sanji responds snippily. Like he needs Zoro to rub in Sanji’s inability to drink anything that isn’t, well, isn’t Zoro.

 

“Would my blood make you sick?” the swordsman asks keenly, getting at something but Sanji isn’t quite sure what.

 

“What? Drinking your blood when you’ve had a lot to drink? I don’t think so. I mean the alcohol has been processed to be in your blood by that point I suppose, but it’s not like this has a lot of logic to it. Why are you asking?” He frowns.

 

“I’m asking you if you want a drink.” Zoro grins at him, leaning into Sanji’s space and making the redness in his cheeks even more apparent.

 

“Yeah but I can’t-” Sanji starts to say but then clocks the way that Zoro tilts his neck and Sanji cottons on. Zoro is offering to let him get drunk, or something close by drinking from him. But… would Zoro even be able to get enough alcohol into his blood to do that without dying of alcohol poisoning? For all that Sanji jokes that Zoro is inhuman he is in fact limited by at least some of his biology, humans can’t have their blood alcohol be too high without dying. And the crew already has enough dead members to it, they don’t need an ex-marimo too.

 

“I’m not sure that will work.” Sanji says carefully.

 

“That sounds like a challenge to me. Give me fifteen minutes and three more bottles of rum!” Zoro declares loudly and walks over to the fire and plucks the bottles out of their resting place in a little soft sand pit that the crew had dug to keep their drink bottles upright and somewhat cool. Though lighting a fire right near them sort of defeated that purpose but it’s too late now.

 

Nami watches as Zoro stalks past with a determined grin on his face and then to Sanji’s somewhat concerned expression and then finally to the alcohol in his hands. She opens her mouth as if to say something but then closes it again, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. That’s most likely a smart call, like everything Nami does.

 

Zoro drains the first bottle in one long mouthful without seeming to breathe or indeed swallow, it’s as if he just pours it straight down his throat into his stomach and bypasses everything else on the way. The second and the third follow in much the same way and within one minute Zoro has drunk all three.

 

The swordsman wipes his mouth on the back of his arm and belches loudly in a way that makes Sanji wonder how the hell he finds the neandertal attractive. Zoro then leans back against the driftwood log and grins up at the stars like he’s done something impressive. Impressively stupid is all the credit that Sanji will give him for that move.

 

“What do you think is even going to happen if I drink your blood now?” Sanji asks flatly.

 

“Well, either this gets you drunk which will be great for you and funny for me.” Zoro says, checking one finger off in what is evidently going to be a list.

 

“Or it makes you throw up, and that’s also pretty funny.” Zoro continues checking of finger number two.

 

“I actually hate you.” Sanji says with a glare that doesn’t even register with Zoro.

 

“Or three nothing happens but you drink my blood and then I drink more booze and it’s easier to be drunk which I don’t really do, so it’ll be fun too. Then I’ll go dance with Usopp and Luffy.” Zoro says smartly. Sanji raises an eyebrow at him, but he’s not sure that Zoro can tell with Sanji’s hair in his face like that, but he hopes that he knows.

 

“Sometimes you’re pretty smart marimo.” Sanji says slowly.

 

“Thank you.” Zoro beams, the alcohol perhaps kicking in a little.

 

“Which kind of makes the moments when you’re brain fryingly dumb somehow worse.” Sanji continues.

 

“Keep that up and I won’t let you bite me.” the other man says tauntingly. Sanji rubs his hands on his face and groans in frustration.

 

“I hadn’t been planning on biting you before you came up with this dumb plan. I actually wanted to just come over here and…” Sanji trails off, unsure as to what it was exactly that he came over for. Sure he wanted to commiserate his lack of booze with someone he who would sympathise but he’d intended on staying longer than that.

 

“Flirt with me?” Zoro asks with a devious smile and in a tone of voice that Sanji is pretty sure that before he died would have sent a bunch of his blood heading south. As it is it just makes Sanji… intrigued would be the best word.

 

Sanji tilts his head and feels Zoro out mentally. Everything feels kind of wobbly and fuzzy but even so Sanji can get the distinct feel of wanting, of almost childish impatience like grabby hands. Zoro’s the one trying to flirt with him. Badly, but still.

 

Sanji smiles in a way that is probably far too fond for him to admit and he stands up. He holds a hand out and pulls a slightly confused looking Zoro to his feet.

 

“Come on.” Sanji says quietly and tugs Zoro in the opposite direction from the crew on the beach. Zoro takes a moment or two before his face lights up with an excited expression and he stumbles along, nearly tripping up on the log as he does so. Sanji lets go of Zoro and the marimo follows him, swaying slightly, his path weaving a little too and fro. He is actually drunk.

 

Sanji doesn’t think that he’s ever seen Zoro drunk. He’s seen the man tipsy a few times, usually at parties after a big battle but never actually drunk. Even though his heart hasn’t beat for quite a long time Sanji feels a flutter of pride in him at the idea that Zoro trusts him that much. It’s not that Zoro trusts Sanji not to turn on him, they all passed that mark of trust forever ago. Zoro probably doesn’t have any expectation that Sanji will refrain from mocking him, and he’d be right to think that because Sanji absolutely will always mock Zoro. But Zoro never gets drunk because he wants to always be ready for a fight. He trusts that Sanji would sense danger coming if there was any and that he’d be able to handle it alone or with a very incapacitated Zoro. That’s… actually touching.

 

“You are stupidly drunk, though most people would be dead from how much you just drank in one go so I’m not that surprised.” Sanji remarks, looking at Zoro’s uncoordinated walk. Zoro seems to notice and with a look of concentration he stops weaving.

 

“I’m not. You’re stupid… your face is stupid and I want to fuck it.” Zoro retorts. Sanji stops and stares at Zoro for a second or two and Zoro looks dumbly back at him.

 

“I… uh. I didn’t say nothing.” Zoro amends awkwardly.

 

“No, this is interesting. What happened to your not sticking things you don’t want to risk losing into my mouth policy?” Sanji asks in amusement.

 

“Yeah but… you’re hot.” the swordsman says with a frown and stumbles on. Sanji mind reels and it takes him a moment or two to physically catch up with Zoro.

 

“You are a very weird drunk. You really just say anything that you think, don’t you?” he asks.

 

“Not anything. Now c’mon and bite me already. I want it and you wanna be drunk too. Hah, drunk.” Zoro snickers to himself in amusement and tugs Sanji backwards towards some palm trees.

 

In Zoro’s drunken state Sanji half expects the other man to just grab him and smush Sanji’s face right up against his neck until he bites him but instead Zoro’s back thunks against the nearest tree and he pulls Sanji close to him for a kiss. It’s not as sloppy and uncoordinated as Sanji might have expected given Zoro’s state, but it seems that drunk or otherwise when Zoro wants to do something he does it well.

 

He doesn’t complain, in fact he more than enjoys crowding Zoro against the trunk of the tree and kissing him senseless. He wonders if it bothers Zoro that he doesn’t react the way that Zoro’s reacting. With Zoro there’s little breathy gasps and the way that he shudders happily when Sanji’s teeth come too close to his lips or the little whines when he teases him just so. Before he can get too far down that train of thought enough to psych himself out Zoro tugs Sanji back a little and then tilts his head to the side. Sanji doesn’t even need to ask if Zoro means it, he knows that the other man wants him to do this, in general he always seems to want that but Zoro had done this whole thing just for that end. Besides if Zoro changes his mind Sanji will feel it well before Zoro thinks to say anything.

 

When he does sink his teeth into Zoro the taste is obviously different. The little lick he’d got from Zoro’s leg earlier was just the start. There’s that usual Zoro taste underneath everything but it feels kind of warped somehow. The thing that hits him most is the alcoholic flavour. Instead of tasting like Zoro the other man tastes like some kind of odd Zoro cocktail. He takes a few leisurely swallows from Zoro before licking his wound closed for a second. He intends to go back but he wants to say something and he’d rather do that without Zoro’s circulatory system deciding to redistribute his blood all over everything nearby.

 

“Oh yeah, you certainly taste drunk.” Sanji comments with a grin.

 

“Ok, great, keep goin’.” Zoro pants, his eyes open just a crack as he leans there with his head still tilted to the side.

 

“You’re getting off on this aren’t you?” Sanji asks wryly.

 

“Y’think?” Zoro snorts and rolls his hips against Sanji’s. He’s not completely hard, but he’s certainly getting there.

 

“Well, okay then.” Sanji remarks, raising his eyebrows and leaning in to bite Zoro again. He hears a low and pleased hiss of ‘yesss’ from Zoro as his teeth go right through where they were before. This time he really does feel Zoro’s hips buck against him and Sanji can’t help but let his hands drift. What can he say, the accusation against him of him being a pervert isn’t all lies.

 

He runs one hand over Zoro’s hip, feeling that really nice V of muscle that leads downwards. It’s easier to do it on one side than the other because of Zoro’s swords being in the way, but Sanji doesn’t mind at all. The next time that he swallows the alcohol in Zoro’s system really starts to hit him. Maybe it’s because Sanji doesn’t have a working circulatory system to distribute alcohol into or because it’s not processed in the same way or perhaps he’s just getting the feel of being drunk off of Zoro but he rapidly starts to feel less and less sober.

 

He rests more of his weight on Zoro, noting that the swordsman is a hell of a lot harder than he was before. The fact that Sanji has his hand on a nice smooth pectoral under Zoro’s shirt probably doesn’t hurt either. Maybe it’s the effects of the alcohol or the fact that Sanji can both taste and mentally feel just how much Zoro wants this, both him biting Zoro and anything else Sanji will give him, but his vision of the world narrows down rapidly just to Zoro and what makes Zoro feel good. It’s amazing, he gets instant feedback to whatever he does through both channels, as well as Zoro’s own vocalisations.

 

Before too long Sanji hazily pulls himself free of Zoro’s neck and laps at his skin, thinking gleefully about just how good he’s going to make Zoro feel and just how hard he’s going to kiss him in a moment. It takes him a few seconds to connect the moan that wrenches its way out of Zoro’s throat when he does it and the thought he had when he licked the other man.

 

Zoro’s hands are exploring just as much as Sanji’s. There’s a hand tightly gripping Sanji’s butt and another trying to work its way up inside Sanji’s shirt, for all that the slightly drunk multitasking Zoro is able to. Now that Zoro doesn’t have to have his head tilted to the side to allow Sanji to drink he’s able to move properly. He’s taken advantage of that by taking a turn to bite Sanji’s own neck. There’s a small flutter of concern about that, if Zoro was to get his blood in his mouth then he would probably die but… it feels really good. For all that Zoro’s got a strong jaw from his three sword style he’s surprisingly gentle when he wants to be, which contrasts amazingly to when he wants to be rougher.

 

Sanji stops thinking quite so much and just enjoys the pleasant haze of him and Zoro making out and getting their hands all over each other. Zoro doesn’t suddenly panic about Sanji being dead and he doesn’t suddenly bite through Sanji’s skin and die. Everything’s just… nice. It’s all good in a hazy sort of way. Sanji wouldn’t say that he feels drunk, not really, he just… feels good and maybe a little fuzzy. He’s not really thinking about what he does before he does it, he’s going with wherever the mood takes him.

 

Right now the mood has taken his hand into Zoro’s boxers.

 

“Uhn, yes, do that.” Zoro groans, his head falling back against the trunk of the tree with a decidedly solid thunk.

 

Sanji doesn’t want to refuse a request like that so he lets his fingers head south. He forgets sometimes just how much warmer than him Zoro is because right now with his hand around Zoro’s dick the other man feels furnace hot. He wonders idly as he slowly moves his hand and watches Zoro if the temperature feels uncomfortable for the other man, but Zoro doesn’t seem to be bothered by anything right now. Besides, some people like the contrast of hot and cold don’t they? Either way, Zoro doesn’t seem to be complaining. If anything the way that his head is tilted back exposing his long throat so much that Sanji can almost see the sounds coming from it shows that he’s very much enjoying it. It’s a mess of gasps and groans with speech littered through it that’s more pleased sounding cursing than it is in any way instructional.

 

He leans in and just scratches Zoro’s jaw with a fang, just enough to get a little bead of blood from him, less than the man might do from shaving. Sanji licks it up and everything crashes into Sanji with the weight of a warship. There’s the desperate claw of yes, yes, yes, move- please- need, oh god, that hits him but also what must be a wave of hormones that all but punches Sanji in the face. Sanji’s own hips jerk out of reflex and a needy shudder runs up and down Sanji’s spine and lighting up his nervous system with an echo of everything Zoro feels.

 

He moves his hand faster and presses himself as close to Zoro’s body as he can whilst still being able to jerk his hand in rhythm. It’s not just that he can feel how much Zoro likes this, but he can smell the other man too. The salt from the sweat on his skin where Zoro is flushed and excited, but he can also sense what must be pheromones of some kind coming off of him. Whatever it is, it’s good.

 

Sanji isn’t sure if he physically feels the result of Zoro climaxing or if it’s the way that Zoro shouts out or even the slam of emotional fireworks from the other man that hits Sanji first. Either way they all mix together in a beautiful mess that has Sanji unsteady on his own feet and fogged up in a happy haze.

 

When Zoro stops gasping so hard he leans in and starts kissing Sanji fervently, his own hands moving to Sanji’s belt buckle. Sanji winces and stops him, that’s not going to work for so many reasons. But actually, he almost okay with that.

 

“I’m good.” He says a little breathlessly, his hand on Zoro’s wrist.

 

“But I want to-” Zoro starts to protest, leaning back to look at him with pleading eyes. Zoro just wants to make sure that he feels good too. Sanji doesn’t know what Zoro had planned because they both know that he doesn’t get hard anymore, unless Zoro has forgotten that after all of the alcohol. But though Zoro definitely is drunk he’s not by any means wasted. Then again Zoro had pointed out that Sanji’s nerves still work, though goodness knows how, so perhaps he was planning on exploring just how well they work.

 

“No, really, I’m great.” Sanji smiles a dazed and fanged smile at Zoro.

 

“Wait… you can feel what I feel, right? Did you come?” Zoro asks with wide eyes.

 

Sanji actually has to think about that for a second, his system runs differently now and it has been a while but…

 

“No, but really I’m good. That was pretty amazing.” Sanji says happily. Interestingly enough he doesn’t feel like Zoro’s left him hanging or anything, it’s not as if Zoro had been getting him off and then just stopped close to the end, it was simply pleasurable. Interesting.

 

“Come on, I want to see this promised drunken dancing.” Sanji says before Zoro can start offering to try to get him off again. It was fun and he doesn’t want to get either of them frustrated by trying for more.

 

Within ten minutes Zoro has his arms around Usopp and Luffy both with all three of them singing with outrageous enthusiasm and volume and dancing and kicking with zero coordination. Though his body remains the same room temperature it’s been since he’s died Sanji’s pretty sure that his heart is warm with contentment right now.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

Sanji is sitting on the beach doing his not-sleeping thing that he’s started doing whenever there’s nothing better to do. He’d already cleaned up the mess from the party and washed and cleaned everything that needed cleaning from his cooking. After that there isn’t a lot to do. He could read a cookbook but he’s read all of the ones that he’s got five times over. Anyway, he doesn’t follow any of the recipes exactly anymore. Perhaps he should consider writing his own but he’d need to ask Nami about how to write something into a proper hardbound book and ask her questions about bookbinding, then again Robin might be the one to ask about that. Either way, Nami’s overworked herself enough as it is repairing his damaged book as much as she could and she’s been obsessively reading it and cataloging the weather as she goes in the hope of finding All Blue with her guesstimated formula. She doesn’t need more work.

 

The conclusion of all of this is that he has nothing to do. Not unless he feels like taking one of the crew’s instruments and learning them. Brook had said that being dead gives you an opportunity to learn new skills, but it feels wrong to take that kind of thing from one of his nakama. So he’s left staring out at the ocean.

 

He jolts out of his stupor when Nami walks up to him, sleep mussed hair and with her sandals in her hand as she comes to him.

 

“Have you seen Zoro?” She asks with a cute little yawn.

 

“Uh,” Sanji says intelligently.

 

“Oh, actually, I remember him passing me a while back saying that he needed a- I mean, that he was going to relieve himself.” Sanji answers, sparing his beautiful Nami the cruder phrasing that Zoro gave him.

 

“Ok, he’ll be back any minute now then. Thanks.” Nami nods. Sanji frowns to himself and looks over at the long since risen sun.

 

“Actually… that was several hours back. I didn’t really think about it.” Sanji says with some embarrassment. Some lookout he is.

 

“Great, he got lost on what should have been a five minute trip. Could you go find him Sanji?” Nami groans wearily and wanders back to the fire, not even bothering to wait for an answer. Not that she needs to of course, Sanji will always oblige his wonderful Nami-swan!

 

“Of course Nami!” Sanji chirps, leaping to his feet. She waves at him sleepily in acknowledgement without even looking around, just a casual thing over her shoulder. Nami is so cool.

 

Sanji deliberately turns his lungs back on again. He can’t smell Zoro around here, even with his heightened senses, but with the smell of the surf and the sea breeze it’s not at all surprising. His best bet is by the trees. He wanders aimlessly towards the treeline with his hands casually in his pockets and breathing through his nose. One of the first things that he finds is the tree that he and Zoro… well, where they had their fun last night. There’s the tang of Zoro’s blood, the iron in it tingling in Sanji’s nose, as well as the faded pheromones and the hint of his release. Sanji grins a fanged smile, that was fun, the noises Zoro made especially and the way he reacted to everything Sanji did. He must do that again, sooner rather than later. Too bad that Zoro’s most likely going to be smug about the fact that he was right, the more he loosened up the more at ease he would be. It turns out that, like lots of problems according to Zoro, the solution was alcohol.

 

The bastard is going to be insufferable now. Thankfully Sanji now has a pretty fail-safe method of distracting him.

 

He heads further away from the group’s camp but confusingly doesn’t smell… to put it the way Zoro did, anywhere that the other man pissed. Zoro is still gross, though at least he had the decency to go away from the camp and not just whip it out in front of the ladies and pee against a tree right there by the camp.

 

Still, it puts him no closer to finding his mossy boyfriend. Boyfriend? Whatever, he’s going to go with boyfriend. If he says it and Zoro has a problem with it then maybe Sanji will change his label in his mind, until then he’s going to call Zoro his boyfriend. It’s a nice thought.

 

Sanji stops in his tracks and inhales deeply. There’s nothing for it, he’s going to have to go into the forest. It’s the kind of dumb decision that Zoro might make, go right instead of back where he came from. He wonders if mildly drunk Zoro has worse directional skills than regular Zoro. Heaven help him if he does. Well, it’s a small island, there’s only so lost that Zoro can get without swimming out to sea and even Zoro isn’t that dumb.

 

The smell of damp earth and sand surrounds him as he strides into the forest. He opens his other senses but he can’t feel Zoro anywhere around, he’s not getting an emotional read on the other man. Either Zoro is too far away or he’s just feeling apathetic about things so his emotions are too light for Sanji to pick up and differentiate from his own.

 

Within a few minutes though he gets a hint of the unique cluster of smells that is Zoro. The steel of his swords, the hint of oil polish on them, the leather of his boots and belt, the hint of sweat and now also the added rum smell. He follows it and finds himself on a slightly trodden path where it’s stronger. The occasional plant or tree trunk carrying a stronger hint of it when Zoro brushed up against it or touched it. He heads uphill following the trail and it’s dumb winding path going left and right and occasionally doubling back on itself and twisting in spirals. He feels like a complete idiot tracking this dumb trail, but within an hour it comes to an end.

 

He stands with his hands on his hips and looks up at the structure before him. He must take Robin here. It’s a giant and clearly ancient temple structure with stone steps leading up to a flat dais with an altar on the front and, noticeably, a giant pit underneath it. Sanji sighs, he’ll bet anything that Zoro is in there. He doesn’t smell any blood so Zoro is probably just fine.

 

He wanders over to the edge of the pit and looks down. Worryingly it’s a spiked pit with large metal spikes sticking up at the bottom. There are sword slashes down the side of the pit and Sanji would guess that Zoro slowed his descent that way, there are also a few spikes with the top sliced off. In the middle at the bottom is Zoro, sprawled between the spikes with a large metal box at his side, it looks to be a chest and it doesn’t take a genius to realise that was what was on the altar and removing it set off the trap. The real question is why Zoro is still in there.

 

Zoro snores loudly and Sanji groans, his face in his hands. He looks around and plucks a fist sized rock up off of the floor nearby and drops it on Zoro, hitting him in the shin. Zoro grumbles and wakes up, blinking blearily at him. Sanji stands, hands on his hips and tapping his foot impatiently, waiting for the explanation and it had better be a good one.

 

“I found a chest.” Zoro says instead.

 

“I see that. WHY are you here though?” Sanji demands.

 

Zoro sits up and rubs his head, cracking his jaw with a yawn.

 

“Well, I fell in and I was tired so I just slept there.” the swordsman says like it’s obvious.

 

“Ugh. You didn’t think that the so far peaceful natives might have got a bit pissed if they came here and found that you’d stolen their shit?” He asks sharply.

 

“I would have fought them.” Zoro answer with an easy shrug. Sanji opens his mouth to protest that he shouldn’t go around picking fights with innocent people but it’d be entirely wasted and it’s not like they haven’t done that kind of thing before.

 

“Okay, but why are you here here, in this temple? You went out for a piss and didn’t come back.” Sanji asks, full well knowing the answer.

 

“If I say that the camp moved, would you believe me?” Zoro asks hesitantly, eyeing Sanji dubiously.

 

“Take. A. Guess.” Sanji grits out in irritation.

 

“Okay, I may have got lost. A little. But it’s not my fault, and the chest has gold in it, Nami will be happy.” Zoro says with a bright smile, like that will distract Sanji.

 

“You are the biggest moron I know, and considering some of the members of our crew, that’s saying something. Come here, I’ll pull you up.” Sanji says with a sigh, crouching down and offering his hand. He realises his mistake after a moment. Zoro doesn’t need his help to get out, not at all, but Sanji offered out of reflex. To his surprise Zoro doesn’t bitch out his offer. Instead he throws the chest in Sanji’s direction so that it lands at his feet. He weaves his way around tight spikes and then reaches up and clasps Sanji’s hand. He hauls the marimo up easily with Zoro kicking himself away from the wall with one easy stride so that he lands lightly on his feet by Sanji’s side.

 

“Okay, fine. Grab that chest and let’s head back to camp. Do you need me to hold your hand so that you don’t get lost?” Sanji asks in a sweet and mocking tone. Zoro responds by punching Sanji in the ribs. The cook snickers and leads Zoro back towards the camp.

 

Zoro was right, Nami is beyond pleased at the contents of the chest and entirely forgives Zoro for wandering off and even charitably agrees to take half of the amount off of his debt as a reward for finding it. Zoro knows better by now to argue with her on it but he grumbles about it under his breath as they all make their way back to the ship.

 

Franky catches up to Sanji with an excited smile on his face and starts to talk enthusiastically about something involving words like: Polydimethylsiloxane, quartz sand and carbo-thermic smelting. Sanji doesn’t consider himself stupid or uneducated by any means, though a pirate ship was hardly an institution of higher education. He still read books on lots of things though and he’s pretty smart. Even so, all of this is going way WAY over his head.

 

“-so when I worked on ships we often had to make our own materials so I used that and built a furnace so that I could refine the-” Franky babbles but Sanji holds a hand up to stop him.

 

“Look, I don’t even know if I age now that I’m dead, but just in case can you get to the point before I grow old and die?” Sanji says, cutting the other man off.

 

“I have a surprise for you.” Franky grins broadly with his eyes sparkling in excitement.

 

“Okaaaaay…” Sanji says suspiciously.

 

Franky has had surprises for him before. Admittedly the amazing high tech kitchen in the Sunny was one, but so was the ‘intelligent’ whisk and food processor that didn’t include a lid, that when Franky demonstrated it, coated the entire kitchen and dining room in a very fine layer of vaporised carrot. The same could be said of the self rotating spaghetti fork which he had given to Luffy who, in his eagerness to eat, had ended up getting his rubber tongue stuck in it and wound up fifteen times before someone managed to turn it off. It had taken ten minutes and lot of whining to free him. Needless to say Franky and surprises make Sanji mildly concerned. The shipwright and engineer is unarguably a genius but between his childish enthusiasm and occasional lack of common sense things do go wrong.

 

Nevertheless Sanji follows Franky to his workshop and indeed notices a few new machines, including a few worrying scorch marks on the wall, but that could easily be from Usopp’s workshop instead as they share the space. There is a gross chemical tang in the air and Sanji is glad that he can just stop breathing and dampen the smell.

 

Franky grabs a box off of the table where a bunch of blueprints are scattered and hands it to Sanji with a bright and expectant smile. Sanji peers warily at the box for a moment, as if expecting it to wriggle out of his hands. When it fails to do anything interesting he pops it open and peers inside. Inside are some lengths of leather in an odd configuration but he puts that aside in order to look at whatever it is in the smooth looking black pouch. He balances the box on one arm and uses his other hand to open up the bag from its drawstring.

 

He pulls out the… the thing in there.

 

Okay, there’s no point in being modest about it. That thing in the bag is a dildo. That is what it is. In horrified fascination he squeezes it and finds that it has a little give in it. At least it’s not hot pink or something, it’s a smooth matte black.

 

“Like I said ‘lil bro, I managed to make silicone and I thought, I know what I should make for my dead buddies!” Franky says brightly.

 

Sanji’s brain recoils away from the plural there and the possibility that he’s not the only one in receipt of one of these boxes. He doesn’t want to know.

 

“Enjoy it! Oh, and before I forget, here.” Franky says, turning around and pulling something from a drawer and throwing it at Sanji who deftly catches it. He turns the small bottle over in his free hand and sees the word ‘lube’ scrawled on it in pen in Franky’s awkward scrawl on a wonkily placed label.

 

“Hah, if I hadn’t given you that Zoro wouldn’t have enjoyed it much!” Franky laughs loudly, his hands on his speedo clad hips. Sanji tries to get his throat to cooperate and push past the mortification freezing his whole body.

 

“How did you know… I mean, fine that you knew but how did you know it was…” Sanji asks, his voice sounding hollow with shock. He’s kind of glad that his heart isn’t beating, he’s pretty sure that if it was his face would be tomato red by now.

 

“Ahahaha, you and Zoro aren’t SUPERRR subtle you know!” Franky crows with laughter. Sanji shakes that thought out of his head with a wince. He had a feeling that Franky knew but he didn’t know that they had been that unsubtle about it. Anyway there are more cringeworthy things to be thinking about right now.

 

“Uh, Franky, this bottle… it isn’t…” Sanji begins dubiously, looking down at the plastic bottle in his hand. “It’s not the kind of thing you’re using on your machines, right?”

 

The fact that the shipwright breaks out into gut busting laughter, his chestplate actually pops open a little he’s laughing so hard, means that Sanji isn’t especially reassured.

 

“Oh boy! No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s stuff Chopper makes. Useful for medicine and other things.” Franky says, sliding his glasses down his nose and waggling his eyebrows in a wave that both irritates and vaguely impresses Sanji with its coordination.

 

“Seriously though, you have to use that stuff. If you use any kind of oil the silicone will degrade and you really don’t want that.” Franky says, his face serious again. Sanji nods, he supposes it’s a good thing that the other man said that. If he hadn’t been given this bottle he would have gone straight for oil as a choice, it’s what he’s used in the past with his one night stands with guys after all.

 

Before Sanji can debate on giving his embarrassing gift back Franky hustles him out of the room with a merry ‘you kids have fun!’ and leaves Sanji standing in the hallway with wide eyes, an open box of sex toys and a bottle of lube in one hand. He awkwardly puts everything back in the box and scurries back to the men’s bunkroom and shoves it in the back of his locker and locks it firmly. He often doesn’t bother locking it, the others know not to touch his stuff without asking and the last time he caught luffy wearing one of his ties as a headband he punted him into the ocean and the rubber boy hasn’t done it since. That had been fun actually, both because it punished the moron and because it meant that Zoro had to sharply wake up from his nap and throw himself overboard to rescue their captain, it was a great two for one deal.

 

He guiltily escapes from the bunkroom as if someone might know what he’s been up to and what he’s hidden. He shuts himself in the safety of the kitchen and paces nervously. He should be getting started on breakfast but his mind is too full of his ‘surprise’ to think about it. On the one hand he wants to throw the damn thing overboard or at least give it back to Franky. He knows the other man put a lot of effort into the thing but he didn’t ask him to, and Franky’s the kind of pervert who would enjoy that kind of thing, not Sanji!

 

Only… only getting Zoro off last night had been amazing and it’s not as if he hadn’t thought about this sort of… fake dick stuff since Franky mentioned it last. Besides, if he gets to feel Zoro’s pleasure second hand, albeit muted, it’s not like it won’t do something for him. Sure it’s not going to be as good as actually fucking Zoro would have done but… but it’s something.

 

Sanji hisses in frustration, he’s getting ahead of himself and just blithely assuming that Zoro would be okay about that kind of thing. Sure he hadn’t said anything before but it’s not like the possibility had come up before on account of, uh, it not coming up. On top of that there was the potential pitfall that Zoro might not be okay being the receiving party, some guys have a lot of hangups about that sort of thing.

 

Sanji personally doesn’t have an opinion one way or the other, good sex is good sex regardless of the logistics involved. Two guys that he’d been with had insisted on being on top, one didn’t care and seeing as they had sex twice they switched and that’d been fun, the other guy that Sanji had nearly slept with laughed at Sanji when he’d offered to take it. There hadn’t been any real thought on Sanji’s part, he’d just felt in that kind of mood, but the guy he was with seemed to think it was hilarious. Sanji had asked what was so funny and the guy had said something along the lines of:

 

‘I didn’t even think it was a question, I mean, look at you. Skinny, young, blond twink! You’re such a pretty girly boy that-’

 

He hadn’t got any further at that point, nor said much after, on account of the fact that Sanji had kicked him in the jaw so hard that half of his teeth shattered and he had to have his jaw wired shut. He showed that judgemental bastard what a supposedly skinny, blond pretty boy could do. And he’s not and has never been skinny goddamnit, he’s compact. He’s got a kick as strong as Zoro’s sword strikes and he doesn’t have legs anywhere near as beefy as Zoro’s arms. He’s efficiently built, okay?!

 

Fucking bastard. He wants to break his jaw again now!

 

Sanji realises that he’s growling at an empty room and takes a deliberate calming breath and stops it. Back to Zoro. The man could have preferences that Sanji doesn’t know about and he shouldn’t just whip that fucking box out mid makeout and expect the other man to go with it. After all, Zoro may never have been in that position before or indeed in any position before. If he’s never slept with anyone before then the pressure to give Zoro a great first time may actually kill him again. Even though he’s already dead. Sanji giggles to himself and wishes that he could share that one with Brook. Too bad it’s too personal to share though.

 

So, there’s nothing for it, he’s just going to have to have a mature conversation with Zoro about it. Like an adult. Ugh, being mature sucks. He starts on breakfast and tries to work out a reasonable way to segue into that topic of conversation.

  
  


Sanji spends the entirety of breakfast and the clean up afterwards trying to work out how to bring up the subject to Zoro, so when Zoro’s nighttime watch comes up Sanji is able to corner him up in the crow’s nest. He figures that he has the conversation all figured out.

 

“So why don’t you just tell me what Franky gave you? I’m on watch, I should be keeping watch.” Zoro grumbles, looking out to sea disinterestedly. It’s night time so at least no one else is up, or at least not up and about on deck.

 

“It’s the kind of thing that I should show you!” Sanji declares, trying to force past the awkwardness in his chest that makes him want to avoid this conversation entirely.

 

“What do you need to be so dramatic about everything? It pisses me off.” Zoro complains with a roll of his eyes.

 

“I am NOT dramatic!” Sanji snaps back, stamping his foot into the floor hard enough to make the wood give an unhappy creak.

 

“Uh-huh.” Zoro says smugly and Sanji flips him off with both hands.

 

“Look just… just look, okay?” Sanji grumbles, fishing the box out from the storage in one the seats where he had transferred it to earlier just for this purpose. He had however shoved three blankets and several books on top of it to keep prying eyes away, which unfortunately means that he has to scrabble around for it for a little bit. Zoro gives a put upon sigh and makes a point of looking out at the ocean disinterestedly.

 

Sanji sighs, deliberately, and shoves the box into Zoro’s hands and waits awkwardly for Zoro’s reaction.

 

Sanji hones in on Zoro’s emotions with laser like focus but Zoro isn’t feeling much of anything aside from irritation at Sanji, which basically registers as nothing to him. He spends so much time getting under Zoro’s skin for fun that he just ignores it.

 

The swordsman shuffles on the seat so he’s not sideways on and instead now has his back to the window. He rests the box in his lap and opens it. Sanji tenses and watches Zoro’s expression and emotions like a hawk. Zoro slowly lifts out the tangled leather straps of the harness or whatever it’s called that the thing fits into. He looks at it and says ‘huh.’ flatly and Sanji has no idea as to whether or not Zoro knows what he’s holding, either way he’s not getting a read on him visually or with his stupid powers. He drops it back into the box and then Sanji hears the shift of fabric and he knows that Zoro is about to find the… the dildo.

 

Zoro pulls it out and looks at it, shifting the box off to his side and then looking at Sanji.

 

“You said Franky made this?” Zoro asks with wide eyes and Sanji can feel a faint tinge of surprise from him, but not much else. Is this good surprise or bad surprise goddamnit?!  

 

“Yeah.” Sanji nods, trying to behave normally and not like he’s internally going over everything with a fine toothed comb for analysis whilst quietly panicking.

 

“That pervert has too much free time.” Zoro remarks with a shake of his head.

 

Zoro doesn’t say anything more and continues being inscrutable, much to the detriment of Sanji’s frayed nerves. Zoro holds it up to eye level and peers at it. He wraps his hand around it and gives it a squeeze and then gently tries bending it between his two hands, it’s not really flexible in that way so it doesn’t do much. He turns it and looks at the base, probably trying to work out how it fits into the leather abomination that Franky made for him. Sanji hadn’t actually thought to work that out, but he’s sure that Franky wouldn’t have given it to him if it didn’t fit together. He hopes that if Zoro says yes that they manage to figure out how to fit it together because if he has to go ask Franky for help he will legitimately throw himself overboard and not come back on the ship ever again.

 

“I’ve never done it like this before. But I suppose guys usually wouldn’t have much use for this. Women maybe…” Zoro contemplates out loud.

 

“Tell me what you’re thinking already!” Sanji snaps, his nerves no longer able to take the tension.

 

“I think that you want to use this on me.” Zoro says, spinning it around his fingers and then balancing it on the tip of one finger, it’s realistic looking head balancing there perfectly. Show off. Great, the first real emotion that Sanji gets off of Zoro is smugness, this power is useless for snooping!

 

“I wouldn’t have gone through the horror of having him give it to me and then having to show it to you if the idea didn’t appeal, would I?” Sanji argues back.

 

“I wish I could have seen that, I bet your face was priceless!” Zoro laughs loudly, catching the offending item in his hand as he clutches his stomach in side splitting cackles. Sanji glares at Zoro. He’s going to punish him for this!

 

“Yeah, I could have died of embarrassment, except I’m already dead.” Sanji says with a grin. Zoro abruptly stops laughing and gives Sanji a dark look.

 

“Hey Zoro, don’t look at me like that. It was just a joke. Man, if looks could kill- AUGH!” Sanji’s second skull joke is cut off when Zoro retaliates by hurling the prosthetic penis right at Sanji’s face. Sanji has a split second of seeing the thing coming towards him, the silicone wobbling slightly with the force of Zoro’s throw, just before it hits him right in the eye.

 

“AGH! You shit brained bastard! MY EYE!” Sanji howls, clutching at it. The indignity of it hurts far worse than the injury but STILL!

 

He sucks in a pained breath and stands up, his hand still over one eye as he feels it healing fast.

 

“That would have been the worst black eye ever and the WORST way to get it!” Sanji yells at Zoro.

 

“I am not even slightly sorry.” Zoro growls angrily at him.

 

“I’ll make you sorry!” Sanji curses and walks over to the window. He can see his reflection in the glass thanks to it being so dark outside, thank goodness that vampire thing was a myth or else this would be super difficult. He watches as the colouration under his eye vanishes right before him. He blinks a few times without pain and turns back around to scowl at Zoro.

 

“If you’re done with the skull jokes, then I have a question for you. If you make one again and I’ll kick you out of the room for the rest of the night.” Zoro threatens, waving the toy at him that he apparently retrieved from the floor. Sanji doesn’t want to risk being hit by it again, he still has some pride left after all.

 

“What?” Sanji asks grumpily rubbing under his eye just in case.

 

“You want to use this on me, so tell me why.” Zoro says, watching Sanji carefully.

 

“Technically that isn’t a question. Don’t hit me with that thing again!” He squawks as Zoro raises the silicone horror in threat.

 

“Okay, okay! Well, because he gave it to me for one. And… I really liked last night, and I know you did so I thought that this could be, you know.” Sanji mutters uncomfortably. Does this mean that Zoro isn’t into the idea? Warily he reaches out and feels Zoro’s mental state out but all he’s getting is supreme focus, nothing else.

 

“And?” Zoro prompts.

 

“And I’d like it too. And for all I kick your ass around I do actually like seeing you enjoy yourself you know, I wanted you to have a good time and it’s not like I can… not on my own. Not anymore.” Sanji says, not meeting Zoro’s eyes and instead looking out of the window.

 

Zoro tugs at Sanji’s chin and makes Sanji look at him. There’s a smile starting to tug at the edge of the man’s mouth and Sanji feels uncertain about it.

 

“Go back to that ‘you like seeing me enjoy myself’ thing.” Zoro says, the smile creeping to the other side of his mouth too now.

 

“Of course I do, don’t you feel like that with me? Anyway, you know that this half works because I get off on what you feel with my creepy Zoro-radio tuned in, remember?” Sanji frowns. What is Zoro getting at here?

 

“Yeah, I saw you watching me last night. You get off on me getting off alright, you watch me.” Zoro says, all but purring at him and wow, Sanji can absolutely feel that same bright flare of lust coming from Zoro that he had before. He suppose that he felt it then too but it would have been too drowned out by the whirlwind of Zoro actually being pleasured to have really felt it clearly like this. But now… wow, that’s a pretty bright burn going on in the other man.

 

“I’m guessing that the reason you didn’t call Franky a pervert and run off without this is because you thought about using it on me and watching what it’d do to me, huh?” Zoro continues and Sanji only realises that Zoro’s been getting closer to him when his back hits the slightly curved wall that makes up the watch room.

 

“I-uh… that…” Sanji tries to coordinate his mouth and lungs to work together. Behind his eyes flashes the image that he had in his head of Zoro, of pressing the marimo up against the nearest flat surface and being able to watch Zoro fall apart without the distraction of his own body getting in the way. Usually if he fucks someone he’s obviously caught up in how good it feels for him too, but with this he could just see Zoro and-

 

“Go on?” Zoro says smoothly, leaning in and wrecking Sanji’s mind. For fuck’s sake, he doesn’t have hormones any more, he shouldn’t be having this hard a time thinking about this! But between his mind’s mental porn screening, Zoro pulling his apparent kinks out to look at them, and the feel of Zoro’s own want his mind has turned his brain to the consistency of scrambled eggs.

 

“So, what, you’re just trying to laugh at me now? Well fine!” Sanji blusters, trying to say something, anything. Plus he doesn’t like how Zoro is pushing him on this, it’s like he’s going to do something and Sanji’s sure that it’s laughing at him. Zoro doesn’t give him a chance to get away though, even though Sanji was moving to push past him. Instead Zoro pushes him back against the wall with one hand and leans in to bite the corner of Sanji’s jaw before kissing it right after.

 

“Not laughing. I want to know what kind of things do it for you, I’ve got to know this stuff to be the best at this, remember?” Zoro says against Sanji’s neck.

 

“You’re still going on about that?” Sanji asks shakily, his hands coming to rest on Zoro’s sides all on their own. Zoro doesn’t answer but just hums in agreement and kisses Sanji. Evidently whatever this thing is that keeps Sanji tuned into how Zoro feels gets stronger with physical contact. Zoro backs off a step or two and Sanji feels it fade down to less burning levels of intensity.

 

Zoro throws the toy at Sanji and whips his shirt off in one smooth movement, his haramaki going with it too. Sanji fumbles to catch the thing and stares at the marimo in shock.

 

“Come on, let’s do this!” Zoro says eagerly, his hands going for his belt.

 

“Wait, what? Right now? I mean- now?!” Sanji asks, his voice climbing in pitch as he stares at Zoro’s half naked form.

 

The swordsman fixes him with a challenging look and Sanji clutches the toy a little tighter.

 

“What happened to ‘I’m busy being on watch’ then?” Sanji shoots back, scrambling his brain in order and hitting the default setting of annoying Zoro.

 

“Your vision is better than mine right? Spin around. See anything? No, now get over here!” Zoro huffs irritably and fumbles with his belt buckle. Sanji can feel the eagerness rolling off of Zoro in waves.

 

Sanji stares at Zoro, this is really happening. He’s really going to get to do this with Zoro, to see him like… oh shit. Oh shit! This is gonna be great! Zoro apparently takes his inaction for lack of interest rather than being paralyzed with excitement.

 

“You know, unless you’re not interested. If you’re not then you can hand that over and I can have fun all on my own. I suppose you could watch seeing as that apparently- MPH!” Zoro is cut off as Sanji launches himself at Zoro, mouth first, and topples them onto the floor.

 

“Tch, you always were a little slow.” Zoro says. It’s probably meant to come out mocking but the way Zoro is breathing fast and how he’s squirming out of his trousers betrays his eagerness. Sanji is absolutely ok with that, Zoro is right, this is what he likes to see.

 

“I’m locking the door!” Sanji exclaims, his last few functioning brain cells propelling him into action. He stumbles to the door, pulling his own shirt off as he goes. He flips the lock quickly and kicks off his shoes on the way back to Zoro.

 

Zoro is caught inelegantly trying to get his trousers off over his boots which he hadn’t thought to remove beforehand. In the spirit of getting naked as quickly as possible he generously helps Zoro out of them and only just manages to avoid accidentally throwing them out through the glass with a last minute reigning in of his strength.

 

Zoro repays Sanji’s charity by clambering all over Sanji the moment that he’s naked, with no regards as to the fact that Sanji is still trying to focus his attention enough to get his own clothes off without interrupting the whole process. He finally gets his own clothes off and a lapful of Zoro as his reward. There’s a fleeting moment of unease when he feels again that Zoro is so hard against him, specifically against Sanji’s abs as the other man leans forward against him and kisses him as hard as he can, whereas Sanji is just… not. The thought skitters away from him though when Zoro’s nails scrape down Sanji’s skin hard. It seems that Zoro both gets off on pain a little but also gives as good as he gets. He shouldn’t disappoint the man then, should he? Sanji scrapes his teeth along Zoro’s collar bone and gets a whine back in return which is of a higher pitch than Zoro would probably willingly admit to.

 

“Okay, we need to- oh- find that… put it together and… yeah.” Zoro breathes, getting distracted as Sanji laps at the graze with his tongue, making it so that there’s not even the slightest red mark there at all. He didn’t even pierce the skin but apparently it’s still good enough for Zoro.

 

Zoro twists and grabs the box, pulling it off of the seat and onto the floor with a noisy clatter as Sanji reaches for the silicone dick that Franky had so kindly gifted them.

 

“Give me the lube, you can work these out.” Sanji says, holding the toy out to Zoro and motioning with the other hand for the bottle.

 

“No way, you’re the one raised by sailors, knots are your deal.” Zoro argues back.

 

“You’re lucky that I can’t get hard. For future reference, talking about my old man when we’re naked counts as killing the mood. You do this, I’ve got better things to be doing with lube and you.” Sanji snaps and kicks the box towards himself with a twist of his hips. He shoves everything else at Zoro’s chest and snags the bottle out of the box, shoving the empty thing away.

 

He adds lube to his fingers until he thinks that he has enough, and then he adds a little more. You can never have too much after all and Sanji suspects that patience isn’t Zoro’s strong suit right now so the more the better. He only just touches Zoro’s skin when the other man jumps.

 

“Cold!” Zoro exclaims quickly, stilling Zoro’s hands with his words.

 

Of course. Sanji isn’t warm blooded anymore, of course this was going to feel weird and wrong for Zoro.

 

“I- I’m sorry. It’s my fault...” Sanji says unhappily, his hand falling back down to his side.

 

“Hey, I didn’t say stop. Cold lube is just always awful, warm it up in your hands or something.” Zoro pants in between frustrated breaths as he tries to both kiss Sanji’s neck and work out the straps of the harness.

 

“I. Can’t.” Sanji says through gritted teeth.

 

“Oh.” Zoro says slowly, realising what he’s said. “That was dumb, keep going, I didn’t think. Just go. It’s good.” Zoro says gently and kisses Sanji’s cheek, just once and softly too.

 

Sanji nods and deliberately takes a breath and lets it out, trying to stop worrying but what if he’s too cold all over and this doesn’t work and-

 

“Overthinking it.” Zoro says with a snort and thunks his giant stupid forehead into Sanji’s temple.

 

“Shut up.” Sanji mutters back in response and puts his hand back to good use.

 

Whatever progress Zoro is making on their equipment is halted when Sanji gets a knuckle or two deep as Zoro groans deep in his chest in a way that vibrates right through Sanji’s unmoving lungs. He keeps going, relying on both his feel of Zoro’s enjoyment in his head and the useless curses spilling from Zoro’s lips as he tries to multitask.

 

“Don’t stop but just… move your arms.” Zoro says unsteadily and drops everything in Sanji’s lap, fake dick and all. Zoro leans in, pressing his face to the crook of Sanji’s neck and peering down. Sanji keeps his fingers moving but his attention is on what Zoro’s doing. Zoro draws something tight around Sanji’s hips and yanks on what Sanji would guess is some kind of clasp or whatever. The other man then shuffles awkwardly, trying to get one leg in between Sanji’s so that he can get another strap around Sanji’s leg. He pinches the skin on Sanji’s right leg when he tightens the strap and gets Sanji’s leg hair on the left, but Sanji doesn’t care in the slightest about that. What he does care about is that he’s now got a dick worth having again, artificially made though it is, and someone he very much wants to use it on.

 

“Alright, let go!” Zoro says eagerly, smearing lube over what Sanji is for now considering his dick.

 

“Are you sure that you’re okay to go now because-” Sanji starts, moving his fingers to emphasise his point. Zoro could certainly be more ready than this, they could take their time.

 

“Oi, you might be happy to do this all evening but one of us has a rapidly approaching deadline for this!” Zoro hisses at him and pulls away from Sanji.

 

“Oh, so you can’t handle it, That’s what you’re saying?” Sanji asks with a catlike grin.

 

“Oh fuck you.” Zoro snaps.

 

“No, fuck you.” Sanji laughs and pulls Zoro closer.

 

“I’m only putting up with your horrible sense of humour so I can get laid.” Zoro lies, shifting into place above Sanji.

 

Sanji’s pretty sure that he was right because Zoro’s not sliding down on him all that quickly and he can feel the muscles tensed up in Zoro’s back. Distraction is always the best tool though so Sanji reaches up and bites him in the closest place that he can reach that isn’t Zoro’s ribs. He sinks his teeth, carefully though, into Zoro’s forearm right near his elbow. The wave of pleasure that smacks into Sanji from Zoro hits as hard as the sea train and he’s not sure if it’s the feedback of Zoro wanting to be bit or if it’s just the up close version of whatever Zoro is feeling. Either way Zoro goes from a mere inch or so onto Sanji to slammed all the way down into Sanji’s lap and shuddering happily at it too.

 

"Are you okay? You've got to be careful, idiot." Sanji says a little sharply, his mouth coming off of Zoro's arm with an absent lick to close it up.

 

"I'm... I'm good." Zoro assures him, rounding his back and breathing out shakily against Sanji's skin.

 

"Okay." Sanji says. He's dubious though. Zoro tends to just muscle through things and pain has never been something that's massively deterred him from doing anything, the fact that Sanji hasn't starved yet is evidence of that. But he's known Zoro long enough to know that calling him on Zoro's assertion that he's good will only encourage the other man to take it as a challenge and Sanji really doesn't want that. Instead, he keeps still and doesn't encourage Zoro to move.

 

He distracts both of them by running his hand up Zoro's bare thigh and dotting his skin with kisses as Zoro collects himself.

 

"Aren't you gonna move cook? Or don't you know how this works?" Zoro teases him, though when he shifts forward to mutter those irritating words in Sanji's ear he gets the feeling that Zoro moved enough to make things work for him.

 

"You're the one who has me pinned to the ground with your dumb and heavy body." Sanji points out, settling his hands on Zoro's hips and pulling the other man back down and thoroughly enjoying the pleased grunt that he gets from Zoro at the action.

 

"Are you saying that you can't move? That you're not strong enough?" Zoro challenges, opening one eye just a little bit to watch the reaction to his gibe.

 

Sanji knows that Zoro is taunting him. He knows that Zoro doesn't mean it. He knows that Zoro thinks Sanji is strong and Sanji thinks that he is too. So he should be able to ignore that barb completely. However knowing all of that logically does nothing to shut down the competitive instinct that he has that may well have been strong enough to bring him back in the first place. Hey, maybe not everyone who gets bit turns like he did, maybe only the really stubborn assholes like him make a second appearance back to the land of the living. So, being the mature person that he is he topples the pair of them onto the floor, with Zoro's back on the ground and gives the other man a spiteful roll of his hips just to show him that he can. Zoro wanted him to move, so he's gonna move.

 

Sanji keeps up moving his hips against Zoro, he has to remind himself to do it now that he doesn't have his own biology screaming at him to move like it would have when he was alive. In any case Zoro would probably react to Sanji stopping and that he would notice for sure. As it is he can hear how hard and unevenly Zoro is breathing and all of the little sounds that come from Zoro.

 

The swordsman has to breathe and so he can't help the way that his breath stutters when Sanji angles himself just so, he can't do anything to stop the little moans and groans that escape with his breath when Sanji moves a little faster or a little slower. Sanji however isn't as distracted as that, instead he can focus all his attention on Zoro. And Zoro may just be onto something because watching Zoro like this is way better than Sanji could have ever imagined.

 

He can see the way that Zoro's skin goes red and even hear the other man's pulse going haywire as he reacts. He gets to see the way that Zoro's pupils are blown out and the way that his fingers scrape against the wood of the floor as he tries to keep himself steady and give himself enough leverage to grind back down on Sanji, moving himself just as much as Sanji is moving in him. Yeah, Zoro certainly makes a picture worth watching alright.

 

What's also interesting is the way that Zoro tilts his head to the side, watching Sanji through one eye. Oh, Sanji knows what Zoro is angling for. He looking to get bit and trying to goad Sanji into doing that.

 

"I'm not dumb enough to fall for that, you know. You're not as subtle as you think." Sanji insists, leaning down over Zoro and shifting his hips slowly.

 

"Yeah you are." the other man asserts and pushes himself up onto his elbow to reach up and tangle his other hand in Sanji's hair and pull just so. The swordsman drags him over to the place where his neck becomes his shoulder, the place that's been their go to spot for biting ever since they started doing this instead of Chopper's dumb curly straw solution.

 

Sanji doesn't actually want to refuse to bite him, even if his instinct to spite Zoro at every possible opportunity tells him to do so.  Because he wants this just as much as Zoro does and that's all there is to it. Even before he bites the other man he finds himself getting more feedback from Zoro. They are pressed together, bare chests against each other and Zoro's legs wrapped around Sanji's hips so tight that Sanji has no doubt that he couldn't stop moving and leave Zoro hanging if he wanted to, Zoro would just move him by himself. Luckily for Zoro, Sanji has no such intention of stopping. Either way, all of that skin to skin contact is sending Sanji all sorts of signals telling him just how much Zoro is enjoying this. It's so close that Sanji can feel it as if it was his own reactions. It's not physical enough that Sanji feels like someone else is giving him the same treatment as he's giving Zoro, but he's getting all of the enjoyment out of it.

 

He gives into what Zoro wants, or more accurately what they both want, and sinks his teeth right into that place between Zoro's neck and shoulder. There's the taste of Zoro that Sanji knows deep in whatever he has left that passes for a soul, but it's the rest of it that grabs his attention. Between the taste of Zoro, the physical contact with him and his weird mind thing he may as well be completely wired into Zoro's system. He can feel every desire Zoro has for faster, or harder or slow down and Sanji gives him whatever he wants, he couldn't even think of doing anything less. He's no longer feeling what Zoro feels in the abstract sense, it's happening to him too. Sanji's own system is alight with 'yes' 'please' 'oh God yes' and 'don't stop, don't ever stop'. He doesn't know if it's from him or Zoro or both.

 

He doesn't know if Zoro is getting what Sanji is feeling too, but Zoro's responsiveness has spiked since Sanji bit into him. The other man has his hands on Sanji's sides so tight that Sanji thinks he can feel his ribs shifting under Zoro's monstrous strength. He can feel the way that Zoro's muscles are starting to shake ever so slightly, like Zoro might just fall apart from this.

 

He had wanted to see this happen to Zoro so badly. He had liked the idea of kneeling up over Zoro and watching this happen. He still wants it. Zoro is so so strong that Sanji can't forgive himself if he misses an opportunity to see the other man get thoroughly wrecked. So with some reluctance he licks Zoro's bite mark closed with a mental urge for Zoro to feel amazing, it clearly works because Zoro cries out from it and arches his back so suddenly and so hard that Sanji hears Zoro's head hit the floor with a wooden thunk.

 

Sanji sits back on his heels, pulling Zoro back with him as much as he can.

 

Sanji had expected Zoro to look amazing like this, and he does, sweat slick skin shining and Zoro's face entirely unguarded for a change and just a picture of needy bliss. Zoro never looks needy, not for anything. He's never seen the man beg for anything but right now Zoro looks like he just might. What he hadn't expected though was for Zoro to look... beautiful. It's so jarring. He's attracted to Zoro and even before all of this Sanji might have privately acknowledged that Zoro was attractive in his own way. Whilst Zoro can be gross and crude he has a certain classic handsomeness about him in places, his high cheekbones and a nose that is far too straight for the number of times that Sanji has kicked him in his face. Between that and his hard won muscled body Zoro has every right to be attractive. But beautiful... well, that's something he'd never thought of Zoro or any other man being. But right now with Zoro spread out below him, responding to everything and anything that Sanji does, with his emotions and his sensations running through Sanji's veins like the blood his heart doesn't move any more, like this Zoro really is beautiful.

 

When Zoro comes it's not with a shout or a cry, it's not with hissed expletives like Sanji used to. It's wordless, it's a break from the vocalisations Zoro had been making up to that point. A sharp intake of breath and a halt to his breathing are all Sanji can hear. Zoro's response is more physical, it's the look of concentrated bliss on Zoro's face, it's the way everything in his body tenses so hard that Sanji can see each muscle define itself harshly for a moment and then everything relaxes and Zoro is left panting and trying to catch his breath as he comes down. Sanji probably isn't helping Zoro breathe by leaning down and kissing him so much that Zoro's more breathing into Sanji's mouth than he is kissing back.

 

He bites Zoro again and physically shudders all over at the feel of everything coursing through Zoro's system but to his surprise Zoro taps his hand sharply and repeatedly on Sanji's side. The signal that they both agreed on long ago when Sanji first started biting Zoro regularly, it meant stop.

 

"Ngh, too much, stop." Zoro breathes out between sharp breaths. Zoro hadn't even got to the word stop before Sanji's teeth are already out of Zoro's skin and he's licking Zoro all better between murmured apologies.

 

"Don't- just... move." Zoro hisses, shoving Sanji's hips away and Sanji gets it. He pulls out of Zoro proper and gets a pleased groan from the other man from it.

 

He hovers over Zoro warily and watches the other man come down and then grin lazily up at him.

 

"That was..." Zoro breathes, beaming up at Sanji, "intense."

 

"Good... or? Sorry for biting you then, I thought-" Sanji starts to apologise but Zoro claps his hand over Sanji's mouth to halt him and shakes his head with an endorphin doped grin.

 

"Quit apologising." he orders in a tired out voice.

 

"How was it for you? Did you..." Zoro asks, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging as he sits up and looks at Sanji.

 

"It was great!" Sanji exclaims, his face splitting into the widest smile that he thinks he's ever had outside of talking about All Blue. Zoro looks pleased and wraps his arms around Sanji's neck and kisses his skin and then lazily biting him without anywhere near enough force to worry him but enough to make him sigh happily, a deliberate exhale of breath to match the feeling.

 

"Yeah, but did you come?" Zoro prompts as he lets Sanji go and leans back to look at Sanji properly.

 

"Well, no, but you shouldn't-" Sanji starts but Zoro's scowl stops him in his tracks.

 

"Damn, I thought that might have worked." Zoro says in a frustrated tone that Sanji has previously only heard reserved for frustrating work outs.

 

"I don't think it works like that, different biology remember? It's like... look." Sanji tries to explain. Instead he goes for a physical approach, reaching his hands around Zoro to the other man's back.

 

Sanji digs his fingers into the muscles of Zoro's back, following the lines of tense muscle, places where his workouts have knotted the muscles or tightened up from too much use. He rubs them and works them around until they release and relax. Within a few minutes Zoro is slumped against him, bonelessly happy. If he was a cat he would be purring right now.

 

"Feels good huh?" Sanji asks smugly.

 

"Mnh, you need to do this more. We're... yeah, more." Zoro says hazily into Sanji's still bare chest.

 

"So it feels good, you're enjoying yourself and you don't want it to stop?" Sanji asks, leading him right where he wants him. He digs his fingers right into a particularly tense spot and Zoro groans loudly. Privately Sanji agrees that he should do this more, he wants Zoro to get stronger, he needs it for his dream after all. He can't do that with muscles that need this sort of attention. Plus now that he and Zoro are dating, or whatever it is that they're doing, he wants to take every chance that he can get to get his hands on Zoro's bare skin.

 

"Yeah, just keep- oh, right there. That's ohhhh." Zoro groans as a tricky muscle just under his shoulder blade suddenly relaxes. That one was awkward, he had to shift Zoro's arm a little just to get the bone to move so that he could get to it properly.

 

"But it's not like you're going to come from this, right?" Sanji presses, feeling more smug with each passing moment. He feels some tension return to Zoro's muscles, though not enough to ruin all of Sanji's hard work. Zoro looks up at him with narrowed eyes.

 

"Are you making a point here?" Zoro demands, his accusation somewhat muted by his obviously relaxed state.

 

"Yeah. I don't need to orgasm to enjoy the hell out of what's going on, and it feels a fuck load better than what I'm doing to you right now, I promise." Sanji argues, digging his fingers into Zoro's lower back and feeling the tense and release of the muscles there.

 

"You know I'm going to fall asleep if you keep this up." Zoro says with a well timed yawn as his sleepy fingers start freeing Sanji from his now rather awkward feeling harness.

 

Sanji shrugs as he slides free and tosses Zoro's clothes at him.

 

"That's fine with me. I don't sleep any more remember. Pass out for all I care, I'll take your watch." Sanji says, standing up with a glorious stretch before searching for his own clothes and having a lazy internal debate as to whether he can be bothered to clean everything that they used now or whether he should wait until morning and make Zoro do it so that they at least have to share the awkwardness of owning something like this.

 

"You're being suspiciously nice." Zoro says, eyeing him carefully.

 

"I think I'm more than nice, kelp brain. But what can I say, fucking your brains out puts me in a good mood." Sanji says, practically preening with his accomplishment and the memory of watching Zoro burned into his brain forever.

 

"Smug bastard." Zoro accuses and flings his crumpled up shirt at Sanji and hitting him in the head again. What is it with Zoro and throwing things at his face today? Sanji freezes though when a familiar smell hits his nose and he hastily pulls the shirt away from him.

 

"Did you just... did you just wipe your jizz of with this and THROW it at my face?!" Sanji demands furiously, his anger not helped by Zoro laughing loudly and jerking his black trousers up and snapping his belt closed with a gleeful grin.

 

"You are... you are the worst person I have ever met, and the grossest." Sanji grumbles wondering, yet again, why he is sleeping with this utter bastard. He grouchily puts on his own trousers and starts on his shirt.

 

"Yeah, but you like it." Zoro says silkily, leaning in and kissing Sanji. The cook feels his will wavering and only just manages to shove Zoro away with a palm to the face. Zoro responds by licking his hand grossly, Sanji cries out and hastily wipes his hands on what little clothes he's managed to put on.

 

"Clearly dying scrambled my brain." Sanji sighs deliberately and flings a pillow and blanket at Zoro, having rummaged around in the storage that he originally pulled his stashed box from.

 

"Nah, you were always this dumb." Zoro mocks, dropping the pillow on the cushioned bench and collapsing on it in an ungraceful shirtless heap before tugging the blanket over himself. Sanji groans and sits down next to him, looking out over the ocean, unable to keep his frustration going as the memory of watching Zoro look so jarringly beautiful floats through his mind.

  
He looks down at the already snoring marimo, goodness knows how the bastard is always able to fall asleep in mere minutes. Sanji frowns and stares out to sea, letting himself relax and absently stroking Zoro's bare shoulders now and then as he does so. He slides into his auto pilot that he's developed for watch. He zones out and looks around at regular intervals, trusting his internal timer to do it with little to no input from Sanji's conscious mind. 


	12. Chapter 12

When Sanji is damn near crushed the next day by a mermaid spat out from a rabbit sea king courtesy of their rubbery captain Sanji is entirely sure that he has the worst luck in the world. He of course has the initial glee of finally meeting a real mermaid, and no, Kokoro absolutely does not count and even thinking of her makes Sanji shudder in horror. He's excited to meet a real mermaid and she's just as beautiful as he had always dreamed that they would be.

 

He's not so dumb as to not notice Zoro watching him carefully when the beautiful young Camie drops right into his lap and when he and the rest of the crew fuss over her. Zoro instead stands slightly off to the side and watches. It's hard to tell if Zoro is just being his usual stoic self or whether he is displaying a hint of concern that Sanji might change his mind and fall for Camie instead of him.

 

Sanji eventually excuses himself into the kitchen and shuts the door behind himself. He turns around to the wall right by the door and bangs his head against it. It's just his shitty luck that he waited his whole life to meet a mermaid, the height of every sailor's dreams and fantasies and he doesn't get to. No, he meets one when he's dead. He's dead and a mermaid literally dropping into his lap did nothing for him. Zip. Nada. Everything is terrible forever and Sanji hates himself and the whole rest of the world too. Not that he's bitter or anything.

 

"What are you sulking about?" Zoro asks, coming into the room and then shutting the door behind him to lean on it and watch Sanji carefully.

 

Sanji scowls at the wood grain and sneaks a peek at Zoro's mental state. Oh yeah, that's suspicion and jealousy alright. He'd never had Zoro down as the jealous type but Sanji gets it. He thinks that he'd be the same if Zoro ever showed attraction to anyone else. But then Sanji hasn't been attracted to Camie at all.

 

"I'm sulking because I hate everything and my life is over." Sanji declares dramatically. So he might be a little dramatic and there might be a little bit of truth to Zoro's repeated accusations on that front, but this is warranted damnit!

 

"My life is over, again." Sanji amends because skull jokes and gallows humour always makes things better and as a bonus it pisses Zoro off incredibly. Right now Zoro looks like he's considering skewering Sanji with one of his swords.

 

"I finally meet a mermaid, a REAL mermaid, now of all times!" Sanji says miserably.

 

"And what? You've got nowhere to run off to with her? I hate to break it to you but she doesn't exactly have the legs to run off with you in the first place, not unless you're okay with a long wait." Zoro snorts. Hello totally unsubtle jealousy.

 

"Don't be an asshole. I wouldn't run off with her anyway, and even if I did both of us are missing key equipment to make it worth it. But that's just the frosting on this awful cake." He sighs and turns to rest his back against the wall.

 

"And what's that?" Zoro asks flatly, clearly unimpressed by Sanji's words.

 

"The worst bit is that I wait my whole life to see a mermaid and now that I do it does fucking NOTHING for me because I'm too dead for anything to work. I don't really get turned on any more, even by a mermaid falling from the sky onto me. It sucks." Sanji explains miserably.

 

"What's that supposed to mean? I've seen you getting turned on, I can tell when you want it." Zoro says, sneaking in a slight brag at the end that makes Sanji roll his eyes.

 

"Yeah I do, kind of. But it's more mental but also as a reaction to me having an effect on you. It’s emotional too because of the fact that it’s you. It doesn't work with just anyone anymore. I used to be able to get hard with nothing more than a fleeting thought of Nami in a bikini but now... ugh. It sucks." He complains. He knows that he's complaining too much. He has Zoro and things are actually working with him, things feel good and it's all great. But over and over again he's reminded that he's not human, not any more and it still hurts.

 

Zoro seems to consider this and evidently the solution that the moron comes to is to lean in and kiss Sanji. There's a hint of possessive 'mine' to it that surprises Sanji, but then Zoro has never liked to lose at anything so why would losing Sanji to someone else be any different. He should be annoyed by it, Zoro sure as shit doesn't own him and Sanji can do what he wants, but Zoro isn't accusing him of anything, not really. Nor is Zoro telling him that he can't look at Camie or admire her or talk to her, all things that would make Sanji kick Zoro in the head and scream at his presumption. But to get that kind of feeling off of Zoro is... flattering somehow. It might be messed up but Sanji's not in the habit of analysing these sorts of things, not when he's being kissed by Zoro anyway.

 

Sanji feels the shift in direction of the ship and he and Zoro pull apart, though Zoro's warm body stays bracketing him against the wall.

 

"We're changing direction, let's go see why." Sanji says, ducking under Zoro's arm and leaning for the door.

 

"If we have to." Zoro grumbles under his breath. Maybe it's just because Sanji is dead but now and then he forgets that the both of them are teenagers still and Zoro is always keen to get his hands on Sanji at any opportunity. Well too bad, they have shit to do.

 

Sanji comes out onto the deck of the ship again and heads to the front and stares wide eyed at what he sees there. The ship is following a giant arrow of fish, a literal arrow where they are swimming in formation.

 

"Hey," he says to Zoro who joins him at his side, "I don't think even you could get lost following that."

 

Zoro says nothing but kicks him in the ankle anyway.

 

"Oi, Luffy, what's going on?" Sanji asks, turning to their captain.

 

"We're going to go fight a guy to get takoyaki!" Luffy declares excitedly, grabbing Sanji's shirt and shaking him excitedly.

 

"Okay, Luffy let go." Sanji says, trying to pry the moron's fingers from his shirt.

 

"Does anyone not obsessed with food have an answer for me?" Sanji asks, looking around.

 

"The flying fish riders and the makuro crew have kidnapped my friend Hacchin and Luffy and the others volunteered to help! They're so kind!" Camie says happily.

 

“That happened quick, we weren’t gone that long were we?” Sanji murmurs to Zoro, hoping that no one else will here.

 

"I don't care." Zoro shrugs, entirely apathetic.

 

"Every time I talk to you I wonder why I bother." Sanji snaps at him.

 

"Uhm, this isn't a problem, is it? With the rescue I mean..." Camie asks, her beautiful eyes wide and worried.

 

"Oh no! Of course not! This is kind of what we do actually." Sanji beams at her brightly. He hears Luffy mutter about his promised food and kicks him for it. He's supposed to be helping this lovely lady because it's the right thing to do, not because he's being fed damnit.

 

Saving people and helping people out is so much what they do in fact that when they show up to the flying fish riders base they even agree to save Hatchan, despite the fact that he was one of the Arlong Pirates who made Nami's life so miserable. They had all thought that something was off with the guy when they first saw him, he'd covered himself in his own ink to make himself less recognisable but Sanji had still seen through it. The moron had actually told him how Arlong was doing when Sanji called the question out to trick him, because apparently plenty of pirates out there don't have two brain cells to rub together.

 

He doesn't know if it's some history with him that made Nami agree to save him, perhaps he wasn't as bad as the others were? Or maybe she was being the bigger person and keeping her promise despite the terrible nature of that particular fishman. It could also be that she wants to use him to get more concrete information on where fishman island is and how to get there. Logically if anyone would be able to give them directions to fishman island it would be a fishman who would be best to do it.

 

The whole fight was messy with a bunch of them still injured from Thriller Bark, including Zoro, they weren't on the top of their game. It's odd because Sanji has had a lot of experience with Zoro's body lately and he hadn't seemed that injured, a little sore in places maybe. But then again Sanji hadn't been taxing him that much to show it, except for their fight on the beach island though that had been over quickly and neither of them were trying to really harm the other.

 

So when Zoro shows up in the kitchen that night after rescuing Camie and Hatchan his first suspicion is that Zoro is looking for somewhere quiet to kick back and relax his tired body. The rest of the crew are either celebrating their victory, stuffing their faces with Hatchan's promised takoyaki or planning their route to Sabody. Zoro could probably do with taking a break from all of those.

 

When Sanji gets a better read on him though it doesn't seem like he feels tired and he doesn't seem to be in pain either. Sanji mentally shrugs, that's Zoro for you, he'll just shake off injuries that would force a lesser man into an infirmary for a week.

 

"What are you doing?" Zoro asks him, leaning against the sink. Sanji pauses in rifling through his cupboards and looks at the other man.

 

"I'm taking stock of what we have and what we don't. I don't know what kind of supplies we will and won't be able to get on fishman island. The kinds of things they sell may not be geared towards a human diet, or it could be just the same. I'd rather be safe than sorry though, so I'm making a list of things we need for Sabody." Sanji explains and crouches down to open his cupboard with the larger bags of rice and pasta in. They're staple foods and do good for padding out meals when nutritious food is scarce, an excellent source of non-perishable calories. Sanji is never one to turn his nose up at that sort of thing, or any food really.

 

"Huh." Zoro says, not a question, just a noise of vague interest.

 

"You've seen me do this before, you must have, I do this before every island that I know will have groceries on." Sanji says, looking up at Zoro with a frown.

 

"Not really. I either didn't pay attention to it before or you'd kick me out when you were busy, or yell shit about booze not being a 'vital resource'." Zoro says, shifting his voice into a mockery of Sanji's.

 

"It ISN'T." Sanji growls at him, shifting his balance onto one crouched leg and sweeping the other up to trip Zoro up but the swordman slams both hands on the counter and fully takes his feet off of the ground and keeps them lifted until Sanji withdraws his dangerous leg.

 

"It's kind of nice seeing you work." Zoro says after putting his feet back down on the ground.

 

"Why? Because it gets you food and booze?" Sanji snorts and peers into a bag of lentils. Low on yellow split lentils, but just fine on the red ones. He should use them more, perhaps a stew?

 

"No. This is just where you belong is all." Zoro says lightly and Sanji glares up at him again.

 

"What? I belong in the kitchen and not out fighting with you?" He asks, his tone warning of threat to come.

 

"I didn't say that. You're a cook, this is what you do." Zoro responds with a frown. Sanji just huffs in irritation and moves onto the tinned beans. Kidney beans are low but they don't need too many of them, not enough of the crew are fans of spicy food which is where kidney beans excel.

 

"Why are you so pissed off?" Zoro demands, one hand moving on his sword hilt, his thumbnail flicking over and under the ridge of one of the hilts of his sword. It's not a threat, it's just something Zoro does sometimes when he's agitated.

 

"I'm not pissed off, and if I was maybe it's just because you're in here annoying me." Sanji denies grumpily.

 

"Bullshit, if you were annoyed at me you would have kicked me by now." Zoro points out with a scowl.

 

"I DID." he says in frustration, standing up and smacking his notebook down on the draining board, clearly Zoro is just going to distract him and won't go away until this is over.

 

"No, you tried. Barely. If you wanted to actually kick me I would have been kicked by now." the other man states plainly with just as much confidence as he would have in saying that the sun will rise in the morning.

 

"I'm not sure if you're trying to piss me off or flirt with me now." Sanji says honestly, feeling Zoro out to try to tell, but all he's getting is a vague air of irritation from the other man and it's clouding anything else that Zoro might be feeling.

 

"I can multi-task." Zoro grins, deliberately jostling the swords on his hip as proof. Sanji rolls his eyes and looks back down at his list.

 

Zoro remains blessedly silent for a few minutes.

 

"Was it fighting with that poster faced guy that pissed you off?" Zoro guesses.

 

"I'm not pissed off! But... that was shit. Ugh, I hate that poster so fucking much." Sanji snarls, clenching his fists as the memory of that godawful image comes into his head. Having to fight the guy who was the physical incarnation of it was just rubbing salt in Sanji's wounds. It was totally uncalled for.

 

"Are you worried that you're never going to get a new bounty picture?" Zoro asks after a moment.

 

Sanji pauses. He stops reading his list and turns, very quickly and with all of the speed that his newfound abilities have granted him. He sticks his foot right in Zoro's solar plexus and pins him against the sink.

 

"Are you insinuating," he begins darkly, "that my bounty is never going to go up and I won't get a new poster? Because I am NOW officially pissed off." Sanji snarls. If Zoro was saying that, joke or otherwise, he will kick the man's ass all across his kitchen, out of the door, onto the deck and maybe around the ship a few times just for good measure.

 

"No." Zoro says firmly but Sanji doesn't take his foot away.

 

"I meant that they might not be able to take your picture any more. Do you even show up in photographs since, y’now?" Zoro asks by way of explanation.

 

This happens to Sanji occasionally, where someone says something so dumb or weird that he actually has no response for it aside from a blank stare. It's as if his mind simply can't compute that level of wrongness.

 

"Because you're a vampire. Isn't that one of the myths, that you don't appear in photographs? Robin said it was." Zoro explains as though it's obvious and Sanji is the stupid one.

 

Sanji still can't get his brain on track with that, it's still too dumb to work a response to, but he's getting there.

 

"And if they couldn't get a good photograph of you they'd obviously have to draw one again. Though this time they might hire an artist that has at least two working hands." Zoro snorts.

 

"That doesn't even make any sense. What's so special about photographs that they wouldn't work on me? I'm not invisible!" Sanji says, finally catching up.

 

"None of you makes any sense." The swordsman says with a shrug. Sanji takes his foot off of Zoro's chest and tries to think of another way around it.

 

"But you can see me, I have a reflection, so unless film is somehow different to everything else it makes no sense at all. They'd better give me a new fucking wanted poster too, with an actual picture. If they don't I'm going to have to hunt down whoever is responsible so that we don't have another bullshit Duval situation again." Sanji grumbles. It'd be just his luck that if they drew another awful picture of him that there would be some other guy out there with the same face as that picture.

 

"I don't care." Zoro says flatly.

 

"YOU'RE the one who brought it up! You can't just say- AUGH!" Sanji yells, throwing his hands up in the air. Sometimes Zoro is just impossible.

 

He stomps back to his list and glares at it like it personally offended him.

 

"Well, as much as I like watching you lose your shit for no reason, I didn't come here for that." Zoro says after a little bit.

 

"Fine, booze. Top left there's still some rum." Sanji says, waving in the right direction and not even looking up from his paper. He could use more flour, though it was always a bitch keeping it dry and it was kind of dangerous to have on a ship anyway. Not a lot of people know it but flour is actually an explosive. If you get enough flour dust about in the air it can combust at the slightest thing. And you can't let it get damp or else it moulds and rots before you even know what's wrong. All in all it's a pain. He's got rubber sealed containers which-

 

"I didn't come here for booze either." Zoro says, derailing Sanji's train of thought.

 

"Then what?" Sanji asks, squinting at him. He figures that Zoro might bullshit him more just to piss him off so the cook decides to cut to the chase and feels Zoro's headspace out. It's that familiar burn of lust, pretty muted and small, more an idea than a feeling but it's still there.

 

"Really? That's what you came in here for?" Sanji says with a sigh.

 

"Hey, what happened to you whining about how wrong reading my mind was?" Zoro frowns at him. He knows that Zoro doesn't actually care about it though, he's just needling Sanji because... well, because that's what they do. Sanji's not in the mood to entertain that right now.

 

"I'm not reading your mind, you know that. I just feel what you feel, kind of. And maybe I did it because I wanted to skip all of this pointless arguing, did you think of that?" Sanji says smugly.

 

"This kind of pointless arguing, you mean?" The other man replies, just as smugly.

 

Damn. He's got a point.

 

"Shut your face." Is all Sanji can say to that and returns to his list.

 

So. Flour. To buy or not to-

 

"All I was saying is that we'll be at Sabody before nightfall, and when we get there we'll be running around the place. Then Luffy's probably going to get into some kind of adventure, so it might be a while. It was just an idea." Zoro shrugs and Sanji doesn't even have to look for the feeling of disappointment. It's not strong, just a twang of it, like a string on a guitar gently plucked. Even so Sanji feels it resonate through him.

 

His first instinct is to tell Zoro that he's busy and to get lost. After all as Zoro so rightly pointed out they don't have much time before they get to Sabody and Nami often gets them to places quicker than expected and he really should have his list done by then. Added onto that is the point that they've not exactly been in a dry patch lately. Zoro's got lucky the last two nights in a row.

 

But... well. It's not a if it's a chore for Sanji, he sure as shit enjoys it too. And though he feels like he maybe should tell Zoro to save it, lest the other man get expectations that he can just get some whenever he so much as looks in Sanji's direction, he doesn't. For some reason his mind flicks back to when he was a kid, telling the cooks that he was with that it was gross to eat leftovers and then being boarded by Zeff's pirates before he'd had his own dinner. He'd cursed his foolishness of turning food down ever since then. It's not like this is the same by any means. Neither of them will die if they don't get laid, but even so the memory is enough to steer Sanji's course of action away from saying no.

 

"Not here. Not in my kitchen." Sanji says firmly. He cooks in here godamnit and he doesn't want to have to spend time scrubbing everything down until it's spotless afterwards just to be sure.

 

Zoro raises his eyebrows, clearly surprised by Sanji's change of mind, but he knows better than to point it out by now unless he wants to risk Sanji changing his mind out of spite.

 

"Follow me then marimo." Sanji purrs and tugs Zoro's shirt as he walks past and towards the door. He doesn't even bother to look behind him to see if Zoro's following. Even if he couldn't hear the other man's boots on the floor he doubts that Zoro would proposition him and then change his mind so soon.

 

He makes his way down towards the store room in the bottom of the ship, the feel of Zoro's want glowing at Sanji's back like a lantern held behind him. It's nice. It's not just that it feels good, because it does, the second hand feeling is making Sanji a little eager himself. But it's more than that, just knowing that Zoro wants him is still deeply powerful to him. Zoro doesn't show interest in every little thing like Luffy, Usopp or Chopper do. So to have something that Zoro is interested in is a unique and special pleasure that Sanji suspects isn't going to get old any time soon. Like he said before, his equivalent of getting turned on now is more mental than physical, though watching Zoro get off might be the exception to that rule.

 

He lets Zoro into the store room and lights the single shielded lantern with the press of a button. There's lots of stores down here like the surprisingly explosive flour as well as traditional explosives like gunpowder for the cannons and several high pressure barrels of cola and the giant metal canisters of cola syrup that Sanji uses to make extra cola for Franky. All in all flames in this room are a bad idea, so the room is lit with just the one small flame that is actually in the hallway behind them and only shines in through the glass half bubble that it's in.

 

Sanji is aware that it makes the room dimly lit, though he can see every single thing in this room with no problem at all.

 

He knows that if he and Zoro don’t get started on this right away then it will get awkward and descend into small talk hell whilst they both try to work out the proper way to segue into coming down here for the sole purpose of sex. So the moment that Zoro’s through the door Sanji pushes him to the side, kicks the door shut with ease and presses Zoro against the wall.

 

He kisses him insistently, one hand on Zoro’s chest to hold him close and the other on Zoro’s hip. He can feel the way that Zoro’s pulse picks up as Sanji kisses him, he can feel the vibration in his fingertips and he can hear it now and then over Zoro’s breathing. Sanji pulls back, his hand still over Zoro’s heart and looks at him uncertainly.

 

“If you were going to die would you want me to turn you into something like me?” Sanji says, his tone hesitant. Zoro looks confused and then frowns.

 

“Wow, you really know all the right things to say you don't you?” Zoro says. Sanji would have turned red if he could. This really isn’t the time to be bringing this sort of shit up, they were supposed to be getting to the sex part, not the awkward morbid questions part.

 

“Sorry, ignore me.” Sanji laughs uneasily and tries to go back to kissing Zoro, but the swordsman stops him with a hand on Sanji’s collarbone.

 

“It would depend on when I was dying. If I’ve achieved my dream or I’m old then no, otherwise… yes I think. But it’s not going to come to that.” Zoro says firmly and Sanji almost believes him. Almost, except he probably would have said the same thing about not dying before he actually did die.

 

“Okay.” He says instead of saying all of that.

 

“Why did you ask?” Zoro asks him curiously and pulls Sanji a little closer again. Sanji shakes his head and puts his hand over Zoro’s heart again, feeling the reassuring thump-thump that anchors him to the world.

 

“I don’t know.” Sanji answers honestly. It hadn’t been on his mind before they came down here, the thought had just popped out of his mouth without going by his brain first. He really hopes this isn’t some sort of supernatural spooky death precognition shit. None of his nakama are allowed to die.

 

“Ignore me.” Sanji insists, his thumb stroking Zoro’s hipbone. The swordsman grins and pulls him closer by the tie.

 

“I have a lot of practice with that.” Zoro says smoothly and Sanji groans, Zoro’s lucky that he’s attractive and good in bed.

 

He probably should be worrying about them running out of time before they get to Sabody, or about someone walking in on them or even the obvious implications of them both being gone for so long. But he’s not. The whole thing feels kind of lazy, in the good sort of way. It’s not like they’re not putting effort into it, but it’s less charged, less needy. Instead they’re taking their time with it. He gets to feel out all of the muscles on Zoro’s chest and trace his scar with his fingers, he makes Zoro laugh by blowing on his earrings until they make noises like little wind chimes.

 

Zoro undoes Sanji’s shirt carefully, button by button and strokes each new patch of skin that he reveals. When they’re both finally naked Sanji spends a good deal of time settled in Zoro’s lap just kissing him and stroking the nape of Zoro’s neck in a way that makes him shiver with something that is halfway between pleasure and ticklishness.

 

“I really like you.” Sanji says softly, and kisses Zoro’s temple.

 

“You say that you hate me an awful lot for someone who likes me.” Zoro answers back to the underside of Sanji’s jaw and licks a stripe over his adam’s apple.

 

“No more than you deserve.” Sanji replies and nips at Zoro’s lip.

 

He lets one hand leisurely reach down and slide up and down Zoro’s dick. The other man just sort of… sighs and leans in, resting his head against Sanji’s bare chest. Maybe it’s the contact, maybe Sanji’s unconsciously wiring himself into Zoro’s feelings or maybe Zoro’s projecting them at him, but if it wasn’t for the lack of physical touch then Sanji could almost swear that someone was doing this to him.

 

“Sanji, I have lube in my pocket.” Zoro murmurs against Sanji’s skin, and he feels the other man blink from the butterfly light touch of his short dark green lashes. Sanji turns his head to look at Zoro’s discarded clothes in a relatively neat pile.

 

“I don’t have… it’s in the back of my locker. I don’t have anything.” Sanji apologises, his hand stilling as he says it. Should he get dressed again real quick and sprint upstairs? That would be a real pain to do, plus it’d be way hard to explain if anyone caught him at it and-

 

“Yeah, but I do.” Zoro says, not noticing Sanji’s dilemma at all.

 

Sanji gives him a baffled look, did Franky give Zoro his own ‘present’ too? It’s only when Zoro raises his eyebrows and gives him a ‘why are you so fucking dumb’ expression and looks down at just what Sanji’s hand is wrapped around that Sanji finally puts two and two together.

 

“OH!” He says loudly, finally getting it.

 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want-” Zoro starts, but Sanji cuts him off with his hand over Zoro’s mouth.

 

“No, it’s not that. I don’t- I like that, really.” Sanji assures him. He casts a wary look at Zoro’s clothes though and his lips pinch together in a thin worried line.

 

“Have you got, uh, protection? I mean, usually I’d say to you ‘hey I’m clean’ because Chopper gave us that medical when he got all serious with his checkups a while back and I haven’t been with anyone since then, but I think my clean bill of health has kind of been wiped off of his books after the whole dying thing.” Sanji says uncomfortably.

 

Somehow after that Sanji finds himself relaxing, Zoro isn't questioning what Sanji said, he isn't trying to reassure Sanji that there's nothing wrong with him and therefore assuming that Sanji is insecure about it. If he had done that it would have only made Sanji think about it more and probably worry about it more. Once Sanji got his teeth into something he found it hard to let go. Metaphorically speaking of course. But if it's not a big deal to Zoro then somehow Sanji feels in some kind of way that it's not a big deal to him. Maybe he's just picking up on Zoro's calm about the whole thing but he's not going to complain.

 

When Zoro covers his fingers in lube and puts them to Sanji it makes him jump in surprise because for the first time in far too long Sanji is warm inside. Maybe only in one really specific place but it still counts. Sure he's had Zoro's warm blood in his mouth and down his throat, but that felt very much like it was Zoro who was warm, not him, but this almost feels like his own body heat.

 

"You're warm." Sanji says happily, falling back on a pile of cold weather bedding that the crew doesn't need at the moment.

 

"Good?" Zoro asks him, checking that everything is okay.

 

"Uh-huh." Sanji says and closes his eyes. He slides his bare foot up Zoro's thigh and scrunches up his toes in Zoro's hipbone, the swordsman shuffles away from him slightly and Sanji opens his eyes, ghosting his foot up Zoro's side and making Zoro flinch away. Ahah, is that ticklishness? Perhaps he'll exploit that later but right now he can't be bothered, he still feels lazy.

 

The strange thing is that since he came back to life, or undeath more accurately, he's got more control over his body. After he'd adjusted to the whole thing anyway. So when Zoro slides into him, he actually does do just that. Sure the lube helps but it bypasses all of the usual moments of discomfort that Sanji has had with previous partners.

 

It feels... nice. He can feel that it feels even better for Zoro though and he arches his back into it and lets Zoro's sensations run through him, damn, it feels good.

 

"Get down here." Sanji says happily and reaches up, wrapping his arms around the back of Zoro's neck and pulling him down into a slow kiss. Sanji hooks his legs around Zoro's hips and back and rolls his own hips into it, enjoying his own response but Zoro's more.

 

Zoro starts to move in earnest then and though the whole thing still feels somehow calm there's a brightening sensation running through Sanji, something electric curling inside him and crackling in the small shifting spaces between his body and Zoro's. His fingernails scratch Zoro's back a little on the hard side as Zoro shoves against him a little hard suddenly and he feels the sharp response from the other man's system that it causes. He digs in again and Zoro actually moans at it.

 

Sanji licks his lips, he probably shouldn't keep biting Zoro so often, but he never takes as much when they get intimate as he would if he was properly feeding off of Zoro. It should be okay, anyway Zoro likes it and Sanji has seen him lose WAY more blood in fights and barely notice it. He can feel from the tight way that Zoro grips his hips that the other man is getting close and if he tastes anywhere near as good during that as he has done before and after Sanji really wants to try it.

 

He sinks his teeth into Zoro's shoulder and is crushed against the bedding below him so hard that he's sure he's going to have stitching patterns etched into his skin. Instantly Sanji feels SO much more. He gasps in a breath through his nose in startled shock and lets it out again right away in a whine.

 

He clings to Zoro like he's drowning and Zoro is his lifeline. He can't stop himself from doing... anything. He's breathing, sharp intakes of breath and actually shaking with the feeling of it. He grinds his hips against Zoro without even thinking about it, he clutches one hand in Zoro's hair and the other around Zoro's ribs without meaning to. It feels so good that it's almost unbearable. There's pleasure running through every inch of his body, so bright he might light up the whole room with it. It feels like electricity running through his system and his heart like Chopper's defibrillator machine and he feels ALIVE with it.

 

When Zoro comes Sanji loses his mind. He digs all of his teeth so deep into Zoro that he feels like he might never get them out again. Just as quick he lets go again, his head hitting the floor hard, even through the blankets.

 

"Oh God! Oh, oh, please- please don't- don't stop!" He begs and Zoro obliges him, leaning down to him and shoving roughly against Sanji, pulling him tight against him harshly and Sanji surges forward and presses his mouth to Zoro again, not having the coordination left to bite him. He doesn't get time anyway because brightness and stars burst across Sanji's eyes and he yells out with it, his lips against Zoro's wet skin.

 

It takes him a moment or two to come down from the whole thing, to find himself back in his body. As soon as he does though he realises just how badly he's made a mess of Zoro's shoulder and fixes it up as best he can, bliss still coursing through his own system in a way that makes him wonder if his heart has started beating.

 

"Shit, Sanji you're going to- to make me- a-ah!" Zoro shudders against him his muscles going tight and then shaking loose again. He made Zoro come again, somehow. He can't even think about it before the same thing hits Sanji a second time and he nearly catches Zoro with his teeth all over again.

 

"A-ah, sorry I should-" Sanji says shakily and moves to Zoro's shoulder again. He has to stop that bleeding.

 

Zoro pushes him back though, pinning him to the floor by his shoulder whilst Zoro's other hand presses against his bleeding shoulder.

 

"Stop that otherwise we're not going to stop, we're in a- a loop or something. I come, you come, I come- just... fuck... give it a minute or you'll make my heart explode!" Zoro gasps out, his eyes scrunched shut and Sanji can still feel that Zoro is bright and hot with pleasure and hormone and bliss rushing through him. A big part of Sanji doesn't want to stop and he knows that Zoro feels it just as much, but the pair of them restrain themselves.

 

"Okay, go on." Zoro says after a moment, his breath still hard and fast but slowing down now.

 

Sanji shifts up and pushes Zoro's hand away, clearing Zoro's skin off and healing him carefully. He focuses on feeling calm, on making Zoro feel calm. He feels almost sleepy and as soon as he’s done and the pair of them fall back on the blankets with tangled limbs.

 

“Ahh. Ahahaha haaaah.” Zoro laughs unevenly, making the arm that Sanji has slung over Zoro’s stomach shake up and down.

 

“Hahaha! AHAHAHA!” Zoro laughs louder.

 

“What are you laughing at, moron? Have you lost your marbles?” Sanji demands, leaning up on one elbow to look down at the laughing idiot that just fucked his brains out and apparently lost his own in the process. Moron.

 

“You said that it couldn’t be done!” Zoro says with smugness that’s only somewhat softened by the mirthful crinkle around Zoro’s eyes.

 

“I-” Sanji starts to protest but then gets what Zoro is saying, he remembers all of the times that he told Zoro not to bother because there was no way he could get him off, that his body didn’t work that way any more.

 

“Shut up.” Sanji grumbles and falls back down again. Zoro rolls onto his side and smiles with his bright white and perfectly human teeth.

 

“I said I’d be the best.” Zoro says with a grin.

 

“Yeah, well, there’s only room for two of us in this relationship and you and your ego counts as two, so I’ll just leave then.” Sanji says with a huff, rolling forward to get up but Zoro clotheslines him and pins him back down to the floor.

 

“Just you and me then.” Zoro says in a voice that’s almost sweet and pulls Sanji close.

 

“I’m a saint for putting up with you.” Sanji mutters, but doesn’t mean it in the slightest and curls closer to Zoro, allowing his warmth to settle into his own body.

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

The difference between being a sensible fighter and an idiot is knowing which battles to pick, so whilst Sanji stays on the ship to guard Nami’s treasure as the perfect goddess wished for he knows not to bicker with Zoro too much when he decides to go off wandering on his own. He protests of course but Zoro doesn’t listen so Sanji gives up. The trees are all numbered and Zoro often does ask for directions, even though he has trouble following any direction that anyone gives him more complex than ‘go straight on’ and even then he screws that up sometimes. If the worst comes to the worst he can always track the moron down by scent again, though whether that will work as well on an island as populated as this he doesn’t know. Sanji breathes in deep and smells the tacky smell to the air. He can smell Zoro’s handprint on the rail of the ship, almost glued down just from the aerosolized sap floating about. Yeah, he can track Zoro in this if he has to.

“Don’t forget to ask directions!” He calls after the idiot.

“Don’t trust yourself!” He and Usopp chime in together, waving the grouchy man off. Sanji snickers to himself and turns his back on the marimo, leaning against the railing. Pissing Zoro off is never ever going to get old.

After that he actually has a nice relaxing afternoon with Usopp and Franky. Until the others get back with the coating technician there’s nothing to do at all. He wonders idly what kind of thing Zoro is getting up to and if he’s lost already. He’d even bet money against Nami that Zoro was, not that Nami would ever bet that Zoro wasn’t. Zoro getting lost was one of those laws of nature, like the sun rising every morning and setting every evening. As sure as those things were, so too was the fact that Zoro would get lost at the first possible opportunity, they were the same thing.

He’s lounging on the lawn deck with Franky and Usopp who seems long past being scared of him now. It’s all pretty nice, idle chatting between them all, though Franky takes every opportunity available to him to turn something into an innuendo and then waggle his eyebrows at Sanji or slide down his glasses and wink at him. Sanji is pretty sure that Franky wouldn’t know the meaning of the word subtle if Sanji kicked it into his chest in morse code. What a moron.

The three of them are sitting having tea, or rather, the others are having tea and Sanji is sitting there smoking because he needs to do something with his mouth too or he’ll feel completely weird. When the denden mushi rings he’s the one to go and pick it up. He figures that it’ll be one of the crew asking him to track down Zoro or maybe even Luffy having run off after something adventurous or shiny. The last thing that he expects is to hear that Camie’s been captured by slave traders. It takes all of his self control not to crush the receiver in his hand. But he can be calm, he has a plan. No one is going to get away with kidnapping Camie, not on his watch!

“Tell me where you guys are, in detail. Just wait there.” Sanji says, forcing himself to be calm and clear. He needs to know just where to start looking, the more information that he has the better. But it’s not just information for him that he needs, no, he’s getting backup.

“We know some pros at this. I’ll call the ‘Flying Fish Riders’.” Sanji says and slams the denden mushi down hard enough to make the little creature whimper before he picks it up and makes his call. Duval fucking owes him after that stunt that he pulled, not to mention Sanji doing him the courtesy of rearranging his face.

When the asshat shows up he ends up sidetracking them with stories about how, despite his new face, he’s had no luck getting girls. Of course he hasn’t, he’s still a blithering idiot with the world’s creepiest wink, and that’s coming from a dead guy. But he gets the idiots back on track and they motor off on their dumb flying fish to go find what kind of bounty hunters might have ‘acquired’ a mermaid. Idiots like that tend not to know when to keep their mouths shut and not brag. Sanji never thought he’d be lucky to know people who have dabbled in the slave trade but as always the Grand Line is a place that insists on turning all of Sanji’s expectations upside down, like what happens when you die for example.

They go and pick up Chopper and Brook, the other morons have run off despite Sanji’s incredibly simple instructions. Each of the Flying Fish Riders (or the rose coloured whatever the fuck they call themselves now) has a Straw Hat on the back of their fish, with Sanji riding on the back of his poster’s previous doppelganger, which proves useful when he has to repeatedly kick the moron in the back of the head for being dumb.

They finally do get to grove 1 though where the disgusting human auction house is, and though they try to get Camie back with Franky arguing that they have no right to sell a living person, the bastards who run the auction house have no inclination of listening. They’re too steeped in their own disgusting beliefs to be swayed by one argument. With no other choice Nami sends them all in to buy her back. As much as Nami loves money she always cares for her friends and Nakama more, all of them know that, no matter what kind of careless face Nami sometimes puts on. She really is a saint.

But when Camie is wheeled out on stage in a giant fishbowl, like she’s some kind of pet, one of the despicable ‘world nobles’ immediately bids more money than the crew has even accumulated and spent in their entire time together. Even if they’d never spent a single bit of it they still couldn’t have afforded to buy her and outbid that guy, even if they did he’d probably just up it without a thought. Sanji stares in horror, they… they can’t get her back.

Sanji grits his sharp teeth as the announcer looks over the shocked room, though the other supernovas don’t look all that shocked, presumably they know just what these bastards are like.

“Th-the whole audience is speechless. But does anyone want to bid over 500 million? If not then it will be an early end for this item!” The announcer says with a theatrical wave towards Camie. Sanji fights the urge to snarl, Camie is not an ‘item’ of any kind, she’s a beautiful and perfect person!

“Sanji! Isn’t there anything we can do?! Isn’t there any other way?! Our friend is being taken away because that guy has more money!” Chopper pleads with Sanji, like it’s his fault or something. Chopper’s just a kid and despite how he towers over Sanji in his current form to him Sanji is an adult, someone who can fix things when they go wrong. Only Sanji has no idea how to fix this at all.

He stands there with his arms folded over his chest, and tries to think of something, anything to do. If he just outright attacks then that collar around Camie’s neck will explode and she’ll be killed, if not outright decapitated!

“This is bad,” He admits darkly, “we had counted on money solving this problem, but the situation is much worse now.”

Hatchan and Pappag are arguing amongst themselves about what to do, but before they can come up with any kind of plan the announcer slams his gavel down on his stand and announces that the sale is complete with Camie bought for 500 million. Sanji frowns, maybe they can get the key after the auction is over, with the others tailing Camie and then they can overwhelm that Charlos guy, unlock Camie’s collar and flee. Maybe they can wait until the heat dies down and then come back to Sabody for the coating and get to fishman island. That’s probably the most sensible thing to do.

As if summoned by a sane plan being put into motion Luffy bursts through the wall behind them in an explosion of plaster, wood and mortar with Zoro right behind him. Great. So much for subtle, fighting it is then.

Luffy sprints down the stairs with guards and Hatchan hanging off of him. Luffy barely notices the restraints around him until the audience sees the fact that the man hanging off of Luffy is in fact a fishman, his four extra arms popping out of his jacket to cling tightly onto Luffy. The crowd erupts into completely racist shouting and yelling, only for the bastard who bought Camie to stand up and shoot him right in the chest.

Sanji gasps in shock and immediately regrets it. The smell of blood, salt slick and ink tinged assaults his senses, Hatchan’s blood. He shudders all over and stops breathing. He doesn’t need this, he’s well fed and perfectly capable of resisting this. But he’s angry, more than angry, he’s furious and the tang of blood in the air is making whatever dark part inside of him that’s keeping him moving snarl with need. The instinct to rip and tear and protect what is his at any costs and- Sanji shakes his head and swallows, grounding himself and focusing on Zoro’s presence at his side. Zoro grounds him, he always has. He can trust Zoro.

Luffy is crouched over Hatchan who is paradoxically begging for Luffy not to attack the guy who just shot him but there’s no reasoning with Luffy like this and frankly Sanji doesn’t want to listen to it either. With a shout about how the guy is pissing him off Luffy pulls back his fist and slams it right into the world noble. Good.

The crowd sits in silent horror, except for the other supernova’s in the room who are grinning like it’s all one big game. Maybe it is to them. After all, it’s not going to be them that’ll be the Marine’s priority now, is it? Zoro’s already got one hand on his sword, eyes darting around for danger to their captain and at his sides he can feel the rest of his nakama that use weapons slowly shifting to them, getting ready for danger but subtly enough so that no one will attack them for doing it. Zoro is by far the most obvious by reaching for his swords but he has the most noticeable weapons so it can’t be helped. He hears the Usopp unclipping his bag, his fingers running over his ammunition.

“Sorry you guys,” Luffy says, turning to them all, his fist still clenched after the punch that sent the noble flying and the crowd reeling in shock.

“I hear if you hit one of these guys a marine admiral is gonna show up with warships in tow.” Luffy says. Nami runs forward, ducking under Luffy and pressing on Hatchan’s wounds, trying to stem the bleeding.  

“Why’d you have to go and punch him?” Zoro asks darkly, his hand unsheathing one of his swords. Luffy’s eyes track to the swordsman, but he waits, not judging the remark just yet.

“I wanted to slice him up myself.” Zoro says, twirling his sword into a proper grip without even a thought, his hands are made for them and his swords made for Zoro. They are perfect together. He hears Nami trying to reassure Hatchan, trying to take his mind away from the pain. The guy is stupidly asking why the crew had to get involved, and for any other crew it would be a fair point, they hardly know Camie really. But with them it’s not like that, and if you put Luffy in a situation like this, where someone he cares about is in danger, then no force on earth can stop him from getting involved.

“Now then…” Sanji says with a smile, this seems like the time for a cigarette. It’s almost a ritual when it comes to fights, to light up right before a big throwdown which this absolutely will be, but that’s not why he’s doing it. He’s hoping that the taste of the smoke and the smell of it in his nose will dampen the smell of blood in the air which no doubt is going to get worse as they fight. Not everyone’s weapons are bloodless like Nami’s can be.

“I guess that’s our plan settled for now then.” Franky says, finishing Sanji’s sentence for him, his eyes looking at the exits and scanning the crowd. He cracks his knuckles and adjusts his posture a little, ready for the fight to come.

“The key to Camie’s collar, it’s got to be somewhere over there backstage. I’ve got to see to Hatchan’s wounds, good luck.” Chopper says to Franky and the cyborg nods, he has his mission now.

The overgrown manchild Charlos’s sister suddenly leaps to her feet, evidently getting out of her shock. She points an accusatory finger in Luffy’s direction and screams, yelling about how dare he, a common pirate peasant so much as touch her brother and blah blah. Even if she is a lady Sanji can’t stand people like the world nobles, people who abuse other people like that, who think they’re better than everyone and tread on anyone else at any opportunity.

As one the rest of the crowd break from their shock, the shout from the world noble getting through to them and they all seem to simultaneously realise just how real and dangerous this situation is. Absolutely no one wants to be in the way when a world noble is insulted, assaulted and disrespected like this. No one but their crew of course. The crowd starts to stampede out of the auditorium, creating chaos.

Sanji sees the gleam of the gun and before he knows he’s reacting. He dashes forward and kicks it up and out of the guy’s hand, his leg a straight line right up from his other leg. It spins wildly in the air and lands behind the guy, shooting someone else in the crowd as it discharges. Sanji has the misfortune of sucking in a new breath of smoke just then and gets a solid hit of the arterial spray in the air and something in his stomach jerks.

Sanji shakes his head, trying to shake the fog from his brain, but he’s so angry, these people don’t deserve to live and they’ve hurt Camie and they’re endangering his crew. He’s always been hot headed, even between him and Zoro he’s the one with the shorter fuse. This whole situation has him out for blood and he really wants it just to be in the metaphorical sense, but the animalistic side in him is disagreeing. Another of the noble’s stooges leaps forward, with a gun in one hand and a dagger in the other. Sanji can’t be sure who he’s going for. Zoro is sprinting past, sword pulled back and muscles tensing for a strike against Camie’s fishbowl to free her, but he’s passing Nami and Chopper who are attending to Hatchan. He could be threatening any of the three of them, or all of them. This is not going to happen, they are his nakama. They are HIS. Time seems to hang, or maybe he speeds up, because he launches himself at the guy and lands knees first in his chest and knocks the guy right off balance. He fires his gun and shoots… someone, Sanji doesn’t know who but a splatter of blood hits his face. Nami screams and Sanji loses it.

**  
  
  
**

“SANJI!”

Someone is yelling at him. He digs his fingers in, it rips and tears easily.

“Sanji, Sanji…”

“Don’t! He-”

Sanji bites harder, it’s stopped flowing but he digs his teeth in and it still works. More of it. More.

Something hits his senses. Steel, autumn leaves, ocean spray, trust and calm.

“Sanji, it’s me, let go.” A calm voice says, Zoro’s voice.

Sanji blinks a few times and the rest of the world comes into focus a little more. There’s a hand reaching out to him, blood seeping from a small cut over the meat of the palm. He breathes in sharply, Zoro.

“Let go Sanji.” Zoro repeats and the words sink in a little. Let go. Let go of what?

Oh yeah, he has his teeth in something. He opens his jaw and the weight in his arms becomes greater. He licks his lips without thought and yeah, now breathing with his mouth open he can almost taste Zoro.

“That’s good, now just drop him, okay?” Zoro says soothingly, coming closer. His mood seeps into Sanji’s mind, calm, be calm. Sanji’s arms relax and something heavy hits the floor. He looks down. There’s a man on the floor, at his feet. Or… he thinks it used to be a man. He seems to be missing a few body parts now, an arm is gone somewhere, long claw marks rip along the joint. There are bite marks in his neck and shoulder, giant gouges in his flesh with black spiderweb marks inching out of them.

“Zoro be careful! He might not be… he might not be Sanji anymore.” Someone else calls out. Chopper maybe?

He jolts and bristles when something touches his face, it’s Zoro. Zoro’s hand and his bleeding palm right by Sanji’s nose and… where is he? He focuses. Zoro is standing right in front of him, one arm stretched out to Sanji’s cheek but the other arm has his sword in it, ready and blade side facing Sanji. Zoro is calm, so calm, Sanji can feel it washing through his skin.

“Zoro?” He asks shakily and turns his head. There is blood running over the floor and bodies flung over seats, unnaturally pale bloodless skin on their bodies and dead faces. He’s shaking, nearly vibrating in fact. How long has he been doing that?

“I’m here Sanji.” Zoro says evenly and it occurs to Sanji that his tone is like Zoro might use on a frightened and dangerous animal.

“What happened?” Sanji asks hazily and looks down at himself. His jacket is missing and his white shirt is… no longer white. It’s almost entirely covered in blood. How?

“A guy nearly shot Nami and you lost it. But you’re okay now, right?” Zoro says, prompting him. Zoro pulls his hand away a little but pauses, his palm near Sanji’s mouth. Unthinkingly Sanji licks it, the taste of Zoro drawing him in. Calm and focus flood through him and Zoro feels like home, safe and warm. The cut knits back under his tongue as easy as breathing.

The rest of the room comes into focus. Whatever fighting had been going on has mostly stopped. There’s an old man by Camie who… doesn’t have a collar on any more. When did that happen? She’s looking at him with wide terrified eyes and for a moment Sanji can’t figure why that is until he puts two and two together and comes up with, ‘you just ripped apart several people and drained them dry in front of her’. Horror and shame roil inside of him and Sanji thinks that he could be sick. Hah. Maybe it was something he ate. He doesn’t remember it though.

“I blacked out?” Sanji asks, looking at Zoro again, who by now has sheathed his swords. Zoro was going to put him down if he needed to, but that wasn’t what he was going for first, probably not even second or third, but he was prepared. Good. That’s a good thing. He’s safe with Zoro and Zoro keeps other people safe from him.

“Mentally, yeah, I think you did.” Zoro nods.

“Sanji… are you… you again?” Nami asks in a timid voice and she’s looking at him with wide eyes and now guilt is wrestling over everything else. He scared Nami.

“I am. I’m so sorry Nami I would never hurt any of you, I don’t… I don’t remember but… it’s okay.” He says in his most reassuring voice. Nami still looks scared but she nods.

“You don’t see many vampires around any more.” The old man next to Camie says with a knowing smile.

An explosion rattles the room, coming from outside and Sanji realises that Luffy is nowhere to be seen. Explosion sounds and a missing Luffy are never a great combination.

“We need to go, don’t we?” Sanji says, looking towards the door.

“Yeah, we do.” Zoro nods, turning slightly and jerking his head towards the door. Sanji follows him quickly, keeping Zoro right in his line of sight.

Everything feels too bright, too real. The edges of the world seem sharper and Sanji can smell everything he can smell food and cotton, leather and carpet, hair gel and moisturiser. All of the little smells that he shouldn’t be able to pick up are forcing themselves into his head and he can’t focus like this. He’s shaking like a man in sub zero water and he can hear the stretch and tense that Zoro’s muscles make as he walks. He stares at him and sees every tiny hair on the back of his neck and the pulse of blood under his skin.

He follows Zoro closely and smells dust, tea and steel like he’s been smacked in the side of the head with it. His head jerks sharply to the side and it’s Brook walking close to him. As they come into the wider hallway leading to the front of the building he is assaulted by flowers, old paper, coffee and silk. Robin, he knows it’s Robin. She’s a little way behind him but also directly to his right. He can hear the little clip clop of Chopper’s hooves  behind him and he doesn’t even need to think about the smell of fur, candy and formaldehyde following him like a cloud. Some deep part in Sanji is screaming that he’s being closed in, to escape, to run and flee or kill and tear.

No.

Zoro brought him back from oblivion so he’s safe with him, Brook is already dead, Chopper has his guard point which even Sanji would have trouble sinking his teeth into without getting just a mouthful of fur, and Robin… well, she could pin him down in a second and there was that time when she snapped a guy’s back with ease. Between the four of them Sanji is safe and they are safe from him.

“Oi, can you handle this?” Zoro asks, looking at him.

“I just- I’m overloaded. I can- everything is too much. I just need to get used to it, I have to.” Sanji says, his voice shaking. His nakama need him, he can’t just lose it like this. If this happens every time there’s a big fight then what use will he be? He needs to be stronger than this thing, he will be.

“Just say the word.” Is all Zoro says on the matter. If Sanji tries and fails Zoro is trusting him to let him know and asking him to trust him back to take over. That’s… they’ve always kept an eye on each other in fights, competed and looked out for one another. But neither of them have ever really said out loud that they might not be able to do something like this. Even at Thriller Bark it wasn’t like this. But Zoro’s offering him that branch and that’s a huge gesture, not one the man would make lightly and Sanji won’t throw it back in his face. Frankly his ego is too low on his list of priorities to really flare up here, and maybe when it’s Zoro really caring like this, he doesn’t need to. He won’t back out of this unless he really REALLY needs to though.

First things first, he needs to stop being so distracted. The sight, sound and smell of the rest of the world is getting too much, he needs something to blot at least part of it out. He pats down his pockets and finds a slightly dented packet of smokes. It’s not covered in blood in the same way that a little water doesn’t get into them either. Sanji has a wax lined packet, he’s always lived on the sea and wasting smokes is never something he’s happy to do. He shakily puts one in between his lips and pats himself down. Shit, his jacket is missing and so is his lighter then.

“Oh, shit, I needed…” Sanji hisses at his own idiocy. He can’t go back and find the jacket, there’s no time and he’s got no clue what state it’s going to be in or if the lighter is even going to still be in there. For all he knows he buried it in the brain of some poor bastard in his blacked out and frenzied state.

“Hey, give it here.” Franky says and Sanji looks over at him, his neck jerking sharp, fast and too far to really be human. Franky for his part doesn’t react or point it out, he just holds his hand open. Sanji hands over the cigarette to Franky and feels the man’s altered skin, hears the shift of pneumatics and gears inside of him and- ugh. He needs to FOCUS.

Franky holds the cigarette up and flashes Sanji a grin before blowing out a burst of fire, lighting the tip easily. With a waggle of his eyebrows he hands it back to Sanji who takes a deep drag. Nicotine, smoke, tobacco, burning paper, ash. He breathes deep. He can still smell everyone else, but it’s lower now, still more than he could going into the building, but a hell of a lot less than it was moments ago.

“Thanks.” Is all Sanji can manage to say. Franky just gives him a thumbs up and a cheesy grin. A warm feeling blooms in Sanji. Despite everything that he’s done, everything that he now is and anything that he’ll ever be, his nakama will always have his back.

He gets out into the harsh sunlight but he doesn’t take any time to adjust, he sees perfectly and he gets the feeling that he’d have just as much detail in the pitch blackness at night. There are a whole bunch of punched out guys, people bleeding and oddly enough a whole load of people bloodlessly disassembled but still somehow alive. Sanji doesn’t want to think about that last one.

One of the marines shouts, noticing that they’ve all come outside. There are shouts to take out the non devil’s fruit users on the crew.

“Non fruit users at the front huh? Looks like they have it in for us.” Zoro says with a wicked grin, looking sidelong at Sanji.

“Careful Zoro,” Sanji says, trying to steady his voice. “A statement like that… could scare a man to death.”

Brook bursts out in uproarious laughter, doubling over and slapping his knee in uncontrollable guffaws. Sanji’s own smile starts to creep onto his face, he’s still himself, he can do this. Zoro’s look is sour but Sanji can feel an exasperated kind of relief come from the other man as well as a muted irritation. Zoro is more reassured than he is annoyed but you wouldn’t know it looking at his face.

“You’re lucky that I’ve got other asses to kick than yours curly.” Zoro growls at him.

“You wanna see a kick?” Sanji shoots back and leaps forward, he leaps forward a hell of a lot actually, farther and faster than he ever could before and that’s not exactly an easy bar to pass. He lands feet first right into the sternum of a marine who was getting too close to Luffy, the guy goes crunch and makes a wet gurgle. Sanji twists and kicks the teeth out of another man’s head.

“Oh, Sanji!” Luffy chirps happy to see him, as if the last time he left Sanji wasn’t eviscerating people with his teeth in a mindless fury. But Luffy knew he’d be okay, trusted him, trusted the others. Luffy isn’t surprised, he’s pleased and happy to see that Sanji is okay.

“Oi, Luffy, look over there.” Sanji says, pointing off in the direction that his keen sight has alerted him to. He still feels like he can see everything, his mind and senses clocking everything that’s going on around him without any input from him.

“Flying fish!” Luffy yells, waving enthusiastically and getting an overjoyed ‘young master!!!’ back, along with a creepy wink that Luffy probably can’t see from this far away but Sanji is subjected to. Morons.

Luffy casually punches a guy and waves some more. His blood mists in the air as the marine’s nose breaks and Sanji chokes on his cigarette. His foot is slick with blood from the guy that he kicked and- and-

He darts off, his back hitting Zoro’s and bouncing off, his aim all over the place. Zoro raises an eyebrow at him but doesn’t say anything. Sanji can deal with this, he just needs Zoro’s zen like focus to ground him, at least until he can crack powering through this phase alone. He bounces from Zoro’s general area, out to the marines blocking their path and back again, hitting up a close dose of Zoro’s focus and calm when he starts feeling a little off kilter. Between the lot of them they make a path for Hatchan, the old man who Sanji still doesn’t know, and Franky who is carrying Camie to get through.

They make a break for it and turn up at a place called ‘Shakky’s Ripoff Bar’. It turns out that the old guy, called Rayleigh, knows the owner. It turns out that’s not the only surprise in store for them.

“THE FIRST MATE?!” The entire crew yells, Sanji starts too but the sound makes him wince, so many mouths and so much noise. The woman behind the bar, Shakky herself, is watching him with a sly smile behind her cigarette. The smell of the smoke helps to mute the smell of Hatchan’s blood in the room as Chopper does his best to stabilize the fishman, another life saved at Chopper’s hands that would otherwise have been lost. For his part Sanji had to ditch his shirt on the way over, having that much blood right under his nose was fucking with his focus too much. It’s rather embarrassing to be sitting around in a bar shirtless but it’s the lesser of two evils.

The whole time that Rayleigh tells them of his tale, how Roger let himself be executed, the history of their crew and Roger’s illness, all throughout that Shakky watches him. Sure, her eyes glance off of him now and then, to answer a question or a brief look away, but she stays watching him.

Sanji isn’t sure what it is about her, but something about her has his attention in a way that he can’t quite drop. It seems that the feeling is mutual if the way that she watches him is any indication. He’s been known not to take his eyes off of beautiful women before of course. Even now he appreciates Nami and Robin’s stunning looks, if only for the aesthetically pleasing way that they are and how he enjoys it when they’re happy, seeing as his libido seems to only follow Zoro lately. This doesn’t feel like that. Oh, she’s beautiful of course, and if he was still human he’d be having hearts in his eyes and fluttering all over the place.

He tries not to stare back, he looks at Luffy, at Zoro, at anyone else but still his eyes end up finding hers again, like iron to a magnet. It’s… disconcerting. He manages to throw in the occasional question about Roger but as much as he tries to focus he can’t shake the feeling coming from her.  

Maybe she’s the same blood type as Zoro and he’s picking that up? It would make sense, Franky’s blood is technically the same as Zoro’s but it’s so different that it’s barely human anymore. But no, that isn’t it either, he doesn’t want to bite her and it’s not because he’s more than full right now. He’d rather not think too long on that point, thank you very much. He’ll freak out about his loss of control later, but right now he still has to be on guard. Mostly from her.

When the crew move to leave the bar Sanji gets up and heads out first, feeling her eyes on his back the whole time. He tucks Rayleigh’s vivre card in his wallet and notes that the others do the same, each putting it in a place that they’re sure not to lose it. It’ll take three days to get the coating done, they just have to stay out of trouble until then.

“Maybe we can go to the park again!” Luffy suggests happily as they walk off through the groves. Sanji groans, yes, letting Luffy loose amongst a bunch of people is sure to let them keep a low profile. But hey, maybe it’ll work, no marine would expect anyone to be dumb enough to just wander back there. Sanji doesn’t contribute much and instead just watches the grove numbers as they pass by. 10… 11…

They’re barely into 12 when Sanji sees someone that he had never ever wanted to see again. Kuma. The man towers taller than all of them and considering that they have Brook and Franky on their crew that’s saying something. Zoro’s swords are drawn immediately and Sanji tilts his balance, ready to kick or jump his way through the guy or out of danger. He and Zoro know what they’re up against this time and now the whole crew is here and engaged in this one fight. Plus, this time Sanji’s got a few new tricks up his sleeve. He’s stronger and faster than he’s ever been and with the blood of who knows how many people flowing inside him he could be damn near invincible.

He glances across at Zoro and remembers finding him in that splattered circle of blood. This time will not be like the last time. Sanji’s going to make sure of that.

“Get back Luffy, he’s a Shichibukai!” Zoro yells, his eyes trained on Kuma.

“A Shichibukai?! How come you guys all know him?” Luffy asks, wide eyed and stupidly taking his eyes off of Kuma. Kuma who is… peeling his gloves off. SHIT.

“Luffy! Don’t let him hit you with that attack! It’s a shockwave!” Sanji yells.

Kuma attacks but it’s not a shockwave that sends Luffy flying and the rest of them crouching into the energy burst coming out from it. It’s a beam of some kind that exploded. Great. So Kuma’s got new tricks too, and Sanji had really been hoping to be the only one. The morons freak out with glee about it being a beam but this is not the time for silliness and games. Sanji doesn’t care how fast Luffy can switch from excitement to deadly, he simply cannot afford the delay here, Kuma is not someone to play with.

Luffy finally puts two and two together and comes to the conclusion that this is the guy from Thriller Bark. Usopp and Chopper explain hastily as Chopper switches forms into something more fight worthy. Sanji’s eyes roam over Kuma, scanning for the slightest weakness. Maybe he can wait until he’s distracted, or see him move and look for some way to take him out, or to slow him down enough for Zoro and the others to destroy him. He may be a Shichibukai but he is still just one man.

Franky takes the first attack, a ‘coup de vent’ that slams right into Kuma’s chest and sends the man skidding back a few feet, but otherwise seems to do fuck all with a side of nothing. Luffy slams his fist into the floor and switches into his second gear.

“I know you’re strong, so I’ll go all out from the start.” Luffy says, all joking in his tone gone. Good, Luffy can be dumb sometimes but when he feels like a situation is serious or that his nakama are in danger you won’t find anyone more deadly serious than him. It’s good that he’s listened, now they’re going to do this and take him down. Sanji bounces on his feet, Kuma looks mildly surprised but not at all threatened.

“We’ve got no choice!” Sanji yells, “Last time we had just finished with Oars. It’s gonna be different now when we’re fresh!” Admittedly, it’s a questionable definition of fresh after that fight with the marines and the assholes in the auction house, but it’s a hell of a lot better than after Oars was.

Zoro clamps his teeth around his sword but Sanji gets a wave of uncertainty off of him and Sanji looks over for just a second. Zoro is staring at Kuma and his brow is furrowed in a scowl, but it’s not just anger or fight readiness, it’s suspicion too.

Sanji darts forward to attack but has to bail out to the left to avoid being hit by that new beam attack. The same happens to the rest of their nakama, diving for cover and taking shots where they can. None of it seems to work though. Sanji hisses and skids into place next to Zoro again.

He, Luffy and Zoro all wind up for strong attacks, Sanji’s leg catching fire with the force of his rage, his protectiveness and his vengeance. Kuma will pay. The three of them slam into Kuma, knocking him over onto his back and into the ground by several metres. Zoro and Luffy stand there, a little out of breath from going all out at the start.

“Is he that different? Does he have a twin?” Luffy asks, looking down at the man in the dirt.

“That’s a possibility.” Sanji concedes.

“No, if he was the real one he’d be teleporting around, avoiding our attacks.” Zoro says with a shake of his head. Sanji grimaces, Zoro is right. Franky and Usopp were able to hit him too whereas before Kuma had been far too hard to hit. He should have known from then, evidently Zoro sensed it, hence his doubt.

“Most importantly he doesn’t use those shockwaves or have those paw things.” Zoro adds.

Sanji goes to the edge of the hole and looks down. He thinks that he sees destroyed circuitry in there too. Whatever this guy is, he’s not Kuma.

“If he’s really a fake then that’s a problem in of itself. It means there’s more than one of something as strong as him.” Sanji says, his voice tight. How many of these are they going to have to fight? They have to last three days, they’ve not even made it an hour before this thing showed up. There’s bigger questions too, if this is a fake Kuma with robot parts then does that mean that the marines are tracking their locations? Will he have sent data back saying that he’s found them and are they about to be swamped by loads more? Now that they know how this thing works the three of them could probably take one out each at the same time, but only by leaping right in at their top levels of power and they can’t do that indefinitely.

Sanji leaps back as the thing, the fake Kuma, moves and hauls itself out of the hole. Not destroyed then. He backs up sharply and the others do so too. They’re not running away but it’s not the brightest idea to be in smacking range of that thing, shockwaves or not. The fight starts taking far too long and Sanji’s heart sinks when Zoro is thrown against the ground so hard that he stays there. He’s alive and he’s fine, but being hit this hard is probably doing a number on all of the bits inside of him that aren’t quite healed, along with creating new injuries.

It’s his head that Sanji is worrying about. Seeing Kuma’s face so soon after Thriller Bark and all that happened there, their sacrifices, the things Zoro was willing to give up. It must be a nightmare.

“Leave that idiot there Luffy, our priority is taking that guy out!” Sanji snaps. Luffy looks at them and nods, hurling himself at Kuma’s double. The others are getting in on the act now too, hurling everything they have at it.

“Zoro,” Sanji says darkly, placing himself between Zoro and Kuma’s double. Zoro will get up, he just needs a little time and motivation. Sanji can give him both.

“The only one allowed to spill your blood is me, got it?” Sanji smirks, keeping his eyes on Kuma. He hears Zoro shift behind him, the scrape of nails on dirt and the pull of fabric on grass. Zoro is getting up.

“Don’t act so cocky, dead man.” Zoro coughs and Sanji laughs in surprise. That’s a new insult! Surprisingly from Zoro it doesn’t hurt, maybe he’s becoming more okay with this now.

“I can still kick your ass, and his.” Zoro says, standing at Sanji’s side and adjusting his grip on his swords and sliding wado back between his teeth.

“So prove it.” Sanji taunts and leaps for Kuma, going so fast that he manages to spin the guy away with a kick and dent his arm.

Usopp shoots an explosive inside the fake Kuma’s mouth and it clearly hurts him. A weakness! At last!

“One of your explosives went inside his mouth! I think you’ve shorted out something inside his body. His body may be tough, but he still bleeds! He’s the same as me, modified all over with all kinds of weaponry but inside he’s originally human!” Franky yells out. They just need to aim for his mouth then, and unless Zoro is able to land on his shoulders and make the guy start a sword swallowing act he’s probably not going to be as useful.

Nami in all of her wonderful brilliance has decided to fight fire with fire, or more accurately, cyborgs with electricity. He sees her sprinting across one of the hills, her clima tact charging up brightly. Unfortunately Sanji is not the only one who’s seen her.

“NAMI! Watch out, he’s seen you!” Sanji yells at the top of his lungs. Nami’s eyes go wide and an ‘oh shit’ expression runs across her face, trying to work out if she can get out of that beam attack before he fires it or if he’ll just predict her move and adjust his aim. Thankfully she doesn’t have to as the genius Robin clamps her hands down on the head of the Kuma double and slams his mouth shut with the force of his own head, stopping his beam from escaping and setting off a giant explosion in his head.

Nami grins and whirls her baton, gathering more lightning as she leaps towards the smoking Kuma-double.

“Sorry if I caught you at a bad time big guy, but I’ve got a storm warning for you!” Nami laughs and lets loose her thunder lance tempo attack. Sanji isn’t sure if his circuits are fried or if he’s just seriously pissed off but the Kuma double starts firing off attacks wildly, sending their nakama leaping for cover.

“Lose your head, lose the fight.” Sanji says triumphantly, his leg catching fire as he runs and leaps for the Kuma double, leaving a trail of burning footprints as he does so.

“Hey, pass him to me!” Zoro yells out and Sanji grits his sharp teeth. Fucking stubborn Zoro. He trusts that the other man knows what he’s doing though so he kicks his right in the chest and hard, sending him flying in Zoro’s direction who suddenly has far more swords than he should have. The cyborg peers over his shoulder as he hurtles in Zoro’s direction, raising his pawless hand for a beam attack. Zoro gets there first though and his attack slams into him with a force that makes Sanji wince just to think about it. He hurtles back Sanji’s way but doesn’t make it to him because Luffy slams the bastard into the ground with a tree sized fist and arm.

Kuma’s double is crushed in the ground in a massive crater and the whole crew is sat around it at varying distances, catching their breath and recovering from the fight. Zoro looks like he’s about to fall asleep in his usual ‘I’ll sleep off this life threatening injury, no big deal’ sort of way. Moron.

The crew go back and forth on what this Kuma lookalike really is, they’re all exhausted though, but they don’t have time to sit around and speculate or recover. They need to haul ass out of here before someone else shows up to fight them.

“A rest would be nice,” Sanji says, looking at Zoro’s dishevelled state, not that Luffy is faring much better. “but we should at least hide ourselves first. If someone else found us first they could take the whole crew at once.”

They probably could run a fight like that again, if it was another Kuma bot they already know its weaknesses but Sanji does not want them to take that chance. He breathes in and smells at least a little blood from everyone. Luffy’s and Zoro’s are the strongest in the air but there is enough that smells like the rest of his crew to set Sanji on edge in a way that has nothing to do with hunger.

Before the crew can listen to Sanji’s highly sensible suggestion there’s a yell from above and a ground shuddering smash as two guys slam into the ground. One is some creepy guy with a big-ass battle axe and not wearing nearly enough clothes. Sanji barely notices him though because behind him is Kuma, possibly a Kuma double again but either way this is a million shades of not good.

The crew go back and forth in mumbles about whether or not this is the real deal and what this ‘pacifista’ thing is that the nearly naked guy was talking about. It’s not the fucking POINT though.

“Whether it is or it isn’t him, we don’t have the strength left to fight another one of those things, that’s for sure.” Sanji snaps and looks around at the others. Zoro is on the ground, crouching by Luffy’s and on the other side of the axe bastard and the maybe or maybe-not-Kuma. Sanji doesn’t like that one bit and finds his mind flipping back to his conversation with Zoro the night before. This would absolutely count as a situation where Zoro should be turned just before he died, but Sanji doesn’t want to do it, he doesn’t want Zoro to die, he wants them to all be okay.

“Get ‘em PX1!” The guy who introduced himself as Sentoumaru yells. Sanji grits his teeth, he saw PX4 on the skin of the last Kuma double, so at least this isn’t Kuma himself. Not that this is much better. An explosion of light hits in the middle of them and Sanji is pretty sure that they all jumped far enough away to be mostly unhurt. He doesn’t smell a sudden increase of blood in the air anyway, so they should be alright. He lands near to where Luffy and Zoro had leapt to.

“It’s time for us to run, but not all together. We need to split up!” Luffy says, and Sanji’s eyes widen. It’s not that he doesn’t agree, because he does. But Luffy is not a man to retreat lightly. The three of them dodge yet another beam and they land together again.

“The three of us should go different ways.” Luffy pants.

“Right… are you gonna be okay?” Sanji asks, looking at Zoro.

“Oh SHUT UP!” Zoro snarls at him and Sanji laughs despite everything. If Zoro still has it in him to yell at him, then he’ll be fine. Sanji sprints off with Nami and Franky, Luffy with Robin and Chopper, Zoro takes Usopp and Brook. The idiot’s carrying Usopp like he’s not bleeding to hell himself, but Zoro always gonna be Zoro isn’t he?

Usopp shoots back and fills the whole area with smoke to disguise their escape. Sanji hauls ass to the nearest bridge with Nami and Franky in tow, but the shitty thing gets blown up by a beam explosion before they get to cross it. At least it didn’t happen when they were on it he supposes.

He turns around and the Kuma bot leaps through the smoke at them. Nami shrieks and spins a protesting Franky between him and her. They don’t have Usopp to shoot in his mouth, Luffy’s fist to crush him, or Robin’s hands to slam his mouth shut on a beam. Plus if Sanji tries to bite him he may well break his teeth off on the metal, who knows where he’s reinforced and where he isn’t. He’s likely not a self made cyborg like Franky with a human back and he doesn’t feel like playing a guessing game with the stakes this high. This fight is going to be a hell of a lot harder with just the three of them.

Another explosion and a blast of light flares off to the side but Zoro’s blood scenting the air is what draws Sanji’s attention with laser guided focus. Zoro is sprawled on the ground, twitching but unable to move and some striped guy who… shit… he’s probably the admiral, is pulling a glowing leg back for a kick against Zoro. That… that will kill him.

His mind flashes to Zoro having to get his lifeless body into his best suit, to clean him up so that he didn’t look like he’d been in a fight, getting ready to bury him at sea. He can’t… he can’t put himself through that with Zoro. Would there even be enough of a body left after an attack like that? Zoro is too far away for Sanji to reach and even if he did he’d be abandoning his other nakama to the Kuma bot. Three against one was already real longshot odds, but two… he’d be burying three nakama instead of one. Zoro would never forgive him. Sanji wouldn’t forgive himself. So he just stands there and screams out what everyone is thinking and knows that he’s going to have to watch his lover die right then and there.

An array of hands drags Zoro out of the way but the admiral just laughs at the futility of it, winding up another attack. Sanji clutches his hands over his mouth, is watching this worse than not seeing it?

Before the admiral can bring his foot down on Zoro and end his life far too soon another man appears out of nowhere and blocks the attack. The light becomes less blinding and- and it’s Rayleigh. Shit, he thought that attack was unstoppable but if anyone can stop it it’d be Roger’s right hand man.

The two men banter back and forth whilst Sanji’s brain whirrs, trying to work out how a man could stop a logia user like that. The admiral is clearly one, turning his body into deadly light like that. Plus, he can hear Brook exclaiming that his sword went right through him. Logia. Sanji’s hearing is far too good and his eyesight too. Even the Kuma bot has stopped to watch the confrontation, his hand half raised in attack.

Sanji can hear Zoro’s uneven breaths, he can hear the way that blood rattles in his lungs and see it dripping from his face and soaking through his shirt. Zoro’s not paralyzed, he can see that from the way Zoro’s twitching and his hand is clutching in the grass, trying futilely to drag himself out of danger but being too weak to do so. Zoro being weak is… is just wrong. Zoro isn’t weak, he’s strong.

Rayleigh smiles and asks if there is any way that the admiral, Kizaru, could let the crew go. Sanji knows the answer before the admiral even says it. No way. He’s not letting them go, not at all.

“Usopp! Brook! Grab Zoro and RUN!” Luffy screams, jolting the two men into action. They scoop Zoro off of the floor with a pained huff from Zoro and sprint off with him. Kizaru barely taking notice. If he can move at the speed of light then he has all the time in the world to catch them doesn’t he? No need to rush.

“Everyone! Think of only getting away right now!” Luffy hollers to all of them and Sanji nods. He can’t worry about Zoro right now, he has to trust that he’ll be okay with Brook and Usopp. He has to make himself believe it or he won’t be present enough in the moment to protect Nami and Franky. Even if it turns out to be a lie he has to do what he can here and now.

Franky is the first one of the three of them to snap back into attention, shooting a coup de vent into the chest of robo-Kuma. It’s enough to blow him away and for the three of them to run to what passes for safety in this situation. Suddenly the Kuma bot stops chasing them and Sanji catches the tail end of an order to go after Zoro. He skids to a halt. No one is chasing Nami and Franky now, and they’re both strong, they can handle themselves for a moment.

“Damn, they’re going after Usopp’s group!” Sanji shouts, his eyes on Zoro’s slumped form on Usopp’s shoulders. Zoro…

“Franky, take care of Nami! You guys go on ahead!” Sanji yells over his shoulder, running towards Zoro.

“Sanji!” Nami yells after him.

“Be careful! I’ll be fine!” Sanji yells over his shoulder and then kicks in some of that extra pumped up undead speed. He ate all of those people back there, he may as well put their high class blood to some use. Sanji leaps and sees that Brook is getting his ass handed to him trying to buy more time. More of his nakama getting hurt by this asshole. Well not anymore!

“Stop you shitty bastard!” Sanji screams, kicking a flaming foot right into the bastard’s back. It topples the fake Kuma forward but Sanji feels his shin splinter and he clutches it as he lands awkwardly. He clutches a hand to it and is then treated to the gross and slightly painful sensation of bones grinding back together and healing. Heh, it doesn’t matter how much he pushes himself against these guys, they can’t kill what’s already dead, right?

“Run Sanji, he’s aiming for you!” Usopp shouts over Zoro’s shoulder as he speeds away.

“Idiot! Get going already!” Sanji yells back. He leaps to his feet but takes the beam full force in the chest. Healing powers or not it still knocks him on his ass. He hears Usopp scream and sees Zoro fly through the air and land on his shoulder and back. The beam hit Usopp in his shoulder but he had time to throw Zoro out of danger. Shit, it’s a smaller wound than Sanji’s but it’s not good. A horrific roar distracts Sanji and he looks up to see Chopper’s gigantic monster form. Every time he thinks that this can’t get worse it does.

“Brook, get up, that beam attack is coming again!” Usopp yells, hauling Zoro upright. Sanji isn’t looking at them though, he’s looking at the man behind Usopp.

“Wait PX1.” Kuma’s deep voice says. And yes, this is Kuma. Sanji’s own senses tell him that but the way he feels dread and anger churn in Zoro’s stomach confirms it. This is the real one.

“What the hell is going on here?! I’m sick of this! How many of this guy are there?” Usopp yells. Zoro grunts and staggers to his feet, clutching his bleeding shoulder. Sanji’s insides twitch, he wants to seal those wounds shut for Zoro but right now there isn’t time.

“So you’re still alive Roronoa.” Kuma says, taking off his glove.

“Thanks to… your… mercy.” Zoro says, his voice weak and unsteady.

“This is no time for a chat!” Sanji barks at him.

“If you were to take a trip, where would you like to go?” Kuma asks, peeling his other glove off and tilting his head curiously. His hand reels back and Sanji dives for Zoro, meaning to knock him out of the path of Kuma’s slap. But he doesn’t hit Zoro, he flies through thin air in the space where Zoro was and now nothing is. He skids through the dirt and rolls over and scrambles back, looking around wildly. Did Zoro somehow jump so fast that Sanji didn’t see him move? He’s never known Zoro to do that before and in his state it seems unlikely.

“Zoro!” Usopp yells and Sanji gets to his feet, leaping back to get some distance from Kuma.

“Zoro vanished!” Usopp continues in horror.

“You bastard?! What did you do to Zoro? He was right here a second ago!” Sanji yells, clenching his fists as he squares up to Kuma.

“ZORO! Where the hell are you?!” Luffy screams from a distance. Kuma… Kuma did something. Something Sanji hasn’t seen before but it’s got to be his devil’s fruit power. The guy can teleport himself so maybe he did that to Zoro, just enough to pop him away out of the fight perhaps, to scatter them and weaken their defences, but why? They’re already scattered around the area, injured and fighting different people. Why do it and what’s taking Zoro so long to get back or yell an answer from wherever he is?

“What did you do!?” Sanji screams at the impassive man.  Luffy demands the same from his opponent but gets an answer from his, the guy with the axe who happens to be nearly buck naked.

“My mouth isn’t that easy to open. But be it true or false they say that any man sent flying by those paws will fly through the sky for three days and three nights. As for the destination… only the man responsible can know. But it won’t be here on this island… you won’t be seeing him again in a hurry. He might be right at the opposite end of the ocean.” The guy says with a smug fucking grin and leaps out of the way of one of Chopper’s mighty punches.

Zoro. Zoro is gone. Zoro. Is…

Sanji shakes. Everything about him feels sharper, his hands tense and something feels… deadly about them, his nails feel longer and sharper maybe. He remembers the claw like gouges in the dismembered guy at the auction house, he thinks that kind of look would suit Kuma right about now.

He shakes with rage. Zoro is gone and Sanji can’t feel his mind any more and Sanji is losing his. He stares at Kuma and the world becomes too bright and too harsh again, shaking and shuddering, red seeping in around the edges. He remembers this, he was facing the man with the gun back in the auction house and the world went funny like this. Nami was nearly hit or was hit and Zoro… it’s hazy after that but Sanji doesn’t care. Kuma hurt Zoro, he hurt his Zoro. His- HIS. Sanji opens his mouth wide, every tooth and fang exposes and snarls. Usopp yelps and backs the fuck up, even Kuma’s eyes widen. Sanji is going to rip every bit of the man apart, he is going to bite him and rip him, he is going to sink his claws… fingers… into Kuma and dismember him.

He leaps, too fast for Kuma and lands snarling on his shoulders. He claws at his face and roars at him. Blood bubbles up under Sanji’s fingers and he will have MORE. He won’t rest until Kuma is dead and then he might keep going just because. He is death and Kuma will DIE. His finger sinks into an eye, his knee slams into ribs and his teeth rasp against skin. Kuma ducks, taking Sanji with him and an elbow slams into Sanji’s side so hard that the world blurs as he flies through the air. He slams into the tree above Luffy and hangs there.

Everything… hurts. He can’t move, it’s like he’s pinned down but… he isn’t, is he? Is he? His head lolls forward slightly and he sees it. A huge splinter of the mangrove tree sticking right out of his chest. Holy shit, he really hopes that the staking a vampire to kill it myth is a myth. The redness in his vision fades and whatever blood powered rage was moving him slips away, leaving him just himself again.

“SANJI! SANJI NO!” Usopp shrieks in horror.

“No… no… no no no no NO!” Luffy yells in anguish. Sanji tries to frown, to tell them that it’s okay, that if this was going to kill him for real then he probably would be completely dead by now. He just needs to carefully slide off of this thing and he’ll be good. Only… he can’t move. He can’t even frown. He’s looking down at Luffy and the thing in his chest and he can’t even shift his vision.

He hears the voices of his nakama call out his name, some in horrified shock, others in screaming pain and anger, some sound numb and shocked.

“Sanji, Sanji… you have to move. You can’t do this, you’re fine, right? This can’t happen again…” Luffy pleads, looking up at him. The guy Luffy is fighting or was fighting seems to be enjoying Luffy’s anguish and isn’t moving anymore, one hand on his hip and the other on his axe, a big grin on his face.

Sanji wills all of his focus together, he tries to scream to work his throat and yell that he’s FINE damnit. But… but nothing happens and he can’t stop the way that Luffy’s eyes and nose are streaming and the wounded howl coming from his throat.

“Well that’s two down, one gone and one dead. He looks good up there, a warning to the rest of the pirates on this island.” Sentoumaru laughs, his axe shaking at the movement. Luffy screams and punches him, but some force bounces the punch off harmlessly.

There’s a pop, the same sound that happened when Zoro was vanished away and Sanji hopes to hell that it’s not another of them.

“HEY! Lord Kuma! Whaddaya think you’re doing to your allies, huh?!” Sentoumaru screams out angrily. Not one of theirs then.

“You two, get away!” Luffy yells in that direction. Usopp and Brook need to go, they need to escape before-

“BROOK!” Usopp’s voice calls out.

“I will protect you even if it costs me my life!” Brook yells.

Pop.

“BROOK!” Usopp and Luffy scream in unison. He must be gone. Sanji strains himself to look but he still can’t move a muscle.

“No, no-” Usopp’s voice. Feet running and then...

Pop.

“Zoro, Brook, Usopp! They’ve all vanished!” Nami screams from somewhere out of Sanji vision. No, this can’t be happening, not when Sanji can do nothing to help. Someone’s got to get him down from here, maybe then he can heal and be of some help! Luffy can grab him from the ground surely!

“What are we meant to do now?” Luffy asks, his voice sounding broken in a way that Sanji has never heard before and never wants to again.

“Get me DOWN from here!” Sanji screams internally but his lips don’t move and his lungs don’t draw breath.

“STRONG RIGHT! Get out of the way!”

“NO! Franky! FRANKY!” Luffy screams, staggering to his feet and running in the direction that Kuma must be.

“No Luffy, you’re doing just want he wants you to!” Robin calls after him, running into Sanji’s line of sight.

Pop.

“FRANKY!” Luffy screams, pained and hurt. Sanji needs to get DOWN! He HAS to!

“NAMI!” Luffy yells.

“HELP M-” Nami’s voice is cut off.

Pop.

SHIT. NO! This can’t be happening. Nami and Franky too now?! He has to move! He focuses all of his strength, every trained muscle that can kick and crack through iron doors, that can pulverise enemies and keep Zoro at bay. He forces everything he has into those muscles but they don’t do so much as twitch.

Luffy screams in blind rage and there’s crashes and yelling but thankfully no more of that fucking popping.

“Chopper! Robin!” Luffy calls out, begging them, they need to go.

“Stop this, PLEASE!” Luffy begs and Chopper lumbers into Sanji’s field of view in his humongous form. His blank angry eyes are level with Sanji’s head and he internally pleads for any of Chopper’s animal senses to know what’s wrong and get him down, to free him.

Chopper lets out a deafening roar, reaching a giant hand forward, obscuring Sanji’s view of what’s going on below until he’s suddenly not.

Pop.

The place where Chopper was is empty, with only Kuma’s paw patterned hand outstretched.

“Robin! Run for it!” Luffy bellows and sprints into Sanji’s line of sight. Robin turns and flees but suddenly Kuma is there and Robin only has time to look shocked and call out Luffy’s name before she’s gone.

Pop.

No… NO!

The only ones in their crew who are left are him and Luffy and Luffy thinks he’s dead!

Luffy curls into himself, his knees and forearms pressed to the floor, gasping for breath.

“What’s wrong with me?” Luffy asks, his voice trembling. “I couldn’t even save… a single nakama.”

“So are you going to get rid of him too and be done with it? I suppose you have an explanation for all of this.” Sentoumaru says with a frown.

A shockwave runs through the ground, it must be Kuma coming to take Luffy too!

“Stamping your feet Rayleigh? Since when have you been a sore loser?” Kizaru asks slyly. Sanji hears a creak and suddenly the world shifts and spins and with a thump he hits the ground. He rolls and the wood comes slightly out of Sanji’s chest as he slides to Luffy.

His captain scrambles closer and reaches out to touch Sanji’s chest, dislodging the wood a little more. It’s a huge effort but Sanji manages to reach Luffy’s eyes and twitch his mouth in what he hopes is a smile. Luffy’s teary eyes go wide with shock.

“Sanji! You’re-!” Luffy exclaims but then disappears in a pop.

Kuma’s head turns to Sanji on the floor, scratches on his face. Figures, all that rage and all that strength and all he did was scratch the man and make his eye bleed. They didn’t stand a chance.

Sanji is yanked up to his feet and the wood is jammed back further into his chest with a wet squish. It’s not Kuma’s grip he’s in though, it’s the old man’s.

“He’s dead.” Rayleigh says behind Sanji. Sanji tries to kick or move or anything but any control that he had with the stake taken out has been torn from him again.

“Pirate or not, a dead man still deserves some respect.” He says authoritatively and Sanji sees something flicker in that bear pawed bastard’s eyes.

“Oiiii, you’re lucky that it’d take far more preparation and work to bring you in Rayleigh.” Kizaru says in that lazy voice.

“But now that we know where you are-” Sentoumaru starts with a grin.

“I won’t be here much longer, and luck has nothing to do with it.” Rayleigh says stiffly and bolts for it. Sanji’s eyes slide closed at the movement and his arms and legs flail wildly out of his control as Rayleigh runs, jumps and ducks under things as he escapes, though Sanji doesn’t hear any attacks coming towards them.

Eventually a door opens, Sanji knows because he hears the turn of the handle and his head is smacked on the doorframe as Rayleigh walks through. He might be dead but that still hurts damnit!

“Look what I found!” The old man says cheerfully and Sanji finds himself dumped face down on a table.

“Oh my. What happened here then?” A woman’s voice asks.

“He got slammed into a tree, it didn’t go well for him.” Rayleigh says with a laugh.

“Yes, I can see that. Okay, let me just get a grip on this…” The woman says. Sanji feels a pulling sensation in his back, the huge wooden shard being pulled loose.

“I managed to escape with him by saying that even pirates deserve a proper burial. Kizaru bought it I think.” the man explains.

“I doubt he’d appreciate a burial.” The woman says, her last word grunted out as the wood is completely yanked free of him. He has a few terrifying moments where he still can’t move but suddenly everything kicks back to life, if a little numb in places, but it passes.

Sanji jerks up onto his hands and knees as soon as the feeling in his legs comes back, gasping in a wheezing and pained breath. He stares wildly around and finds himself back in the bar that he was in before. Rayleigh is sitting on a bar stool and the woman, Shakky, is standing there holding the massive shard of wood in her hand and smiling wryly at him. Sanji is speechless for a second but that soon fades. He hurls himself at Rayleigh, grabbing him by the shirt.

“WHERE DID KUMA SEND THEM?! I NEED TO GET THEM BACK I-” Sanji yells but Rayleigh cuts him off with a raise of his hand.

“I don’t know and I have no way of finding out, but if your nakama are as strong and determined as I think they are then they’ll all find their way back here sooner or later.” Rayleigh says simply, like it’s some obvious fact. It actually takes Sanji a few seconds to process that statement before the rage comes flying out of his mouth.

“How can they POSSIBLY do that?! It took all of Nami’s navigational skills to get us here, there’s no way they can all do it alone!” Sanji yells and his mind flicks to Zoro. Zoro actually has a chance of making it here, but only by dumbly wandering the wrong way and getting lost in ways that shouldn’t be possible.

“You’re forgetting the vivre card that I gave you all, Sanji, wasn’t it?” Shakky asks him with a smile, her arms crossed over her chest and the giant hunk of wood still in one hand. Ah. Yes, he’d forgotten that she saw that and was in fact the one who pulled it from his chest and now he’s somehow got to explain that to her.

“Uhm. Yes, okay. Ah, about that… chest injury with that wood… it’s not what you think! I can explain it!” Sanji fumbles, desperately trying to stop the already disconcerting woman from realising what he really is.

“This I want to hear.” Shakky says with a laugh.

“Good luck kid.” Rayleigh snorts into his hand.

“I…” Sanji stalls, trying desperately to think of a lie as quickly as Usopp would.

“My heart isn’t where most people’s is… so it didn’t kill me?” Sanji says uncertainly. That’s sounds like a shit lie even to his ears.

“Unless your heart is in your pants that’s not going to fly, this went through your whole chest. I saw your spine re-form, and your chest is still currently repairing itself, I can see your lungs, one of them still has a hole in it.” Shakky says, pointing a finger at him. Sanji looks down and, yeah, there they are. Thankfully they’re covered up soon enough by ribs sliding back over them, crackling into formation like spreading ice which is in turn shortly covered by muscle and skin. That’s certainly faster than last time, but he supposes he’s better fed. Still, that leaves him a little short of an explanation.

“Go on.” Shakky says with a smirk and Sanji looks up helplessly.

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing.” He admits in defeat.

“Don’t… try to kill me or chase after me with pitchforks… or put that thing back in my chest.” Sanji requests hopefully, warily eyeing the big spear of wood in her hands.

“Don’t worry, I’m not into killing my own.” Shakky answers with a smile which has suddenly elongating teeth in it, teeth just like Sanji’s.

She smiles wide at him, her other teeth sharpening and her stare becoming the same fixing and unnerving stare that it was the last time he was in here. Sanji backs up a little, she’s having the same effect on him that his growl had on Usopp, a kind of primal sense to not fuck with that and get the hell away instead.

“I especially don’t kill babies.” She adds, coming around the bar with a shimmy of her feminine hips.

“Baby? I’m- I’m not a-” But Sanji is cut off when Shakky is suddenly THERE and in his space and forcing his mouth open with a vice like squeeze of his cheeks. She reaches in and pinches one of his too long canines and rubs her thumb over it. He flails but manages to keep mostly still, he doesn’t want her yanking a tooth out after all!

“Baby teeth, without a doubt. Brand new too, what are you, a year in?” Shakky asks, letting him go. Sanji stumbles back, a hand over his mouth.

“She means when were you bitten.” Rayleigh helpfully chips in, having turned around in his seat to watch the two of them.

“Three months, roughly.” Sanji answers reluctantly. Shakky’s eyebrows shoot up in obvious surprise.

“Well where’s your maker? The rest of your crew were alive so it’s not any of them. You’re much too new to be out on your own, pirate or not.” She says disapprovingly, like Sanji’s some little kid wandering off on his own. He bristles at the insinuation but Shakky is a lady and he should be polite to her, she’s a creepy and apparently undead lady, but still a lady.

“If you mean the guy who bit me, I bit him back to show him how he liked it. That turned out not to be so smart on my part.” Sanji admits uneasily.

“And you haven’t seen him since?” Shakky asks in a surprised tone.

“We sailed off from his crew, I don’t know if they followed though. I was kind of… dead for a bit.” Sanji winces. He still doesn’t really like thinking about that, much less what it did to his crew. Hearing Luffy sob out that Sanji couldn't die on him again was about the worst thing he’s ever heard. He wonders if Rayleigh heard that. Shit, the rest of his nakama must think that he’s dead and who knows where they are now. Hasn’t he hurt them enough?

“So no one has taught you anything? Like not drinking from devil’s fruit users or eating human food or about freezing in the cold?” Shakky asks, looking painfully worried.

“I found those unpleasant things out on my own, but wait, what about the last one?” Sanji asks with a frown. Freezing in the cold doesn’t sound pleasant at all.

Shakky nods slowly like she’s considering something very deep before turning to Rayleigh with a firm expression on her face.

“I’m keeping him.” She says firmly.

“Wait, what?” Sanji asks looking between them in wide eyed confusion.

“He needs someone to show him what to do, and if Kuma has sent his nakama away then who knows how long he’ll be on his own. I’m keeping him.” She says definitively. Rayleigh just raises and eyebrow and says nothing, as if he knows that arguing this kind of point will get him nowhere and he can’t be bothered to try.

“Ah… as much as I appreciate an offer to… keep me… from a lovely lady such as yourself I have to go find my nakama. They need me.” Sanji insists. He can only imagine in horror what the others are going through right now.

“They’ll still be in the air at this point, you’ve no idea where they are or how you can get to them. But they do know where I am. There’s nothing you can do.” Rayleigh says flatly.

Sanji grits his teeth and clenches his fists. It’s bad enough that he couldn’t do enough in that fight and then was reduced to being able to do literally nothing at the end, but now he can’t even go find his nakama and help them? Can it really be that there isn’t a single thing that he can do?

“I have to do something!” Sanji blurts out in desperation. Rayleigh watches him with a careful assessing gaze but says nothing, Shakky simply looks at him, one finger tapping on her chin thoughtfully.

“My nakama were scattered, taken from me to- to who knows where, even you don’t know! I couldn't stop it in the fight and now you’re telling me I can do nothing?! What good am I to them if I can’t do a single thing?! If I can’t be of any use to them then- then I might as well lay down and actually be dead!” Sanji yells out, his voice filling the room with his helpless fury.

He feels something wet run down his cheek and he realises that he’s crying, crying for his nakama, for their pain and for his failure.

“I failed them.” He says quietly, all of the rage vanishing and leaving only shame behind in its place.

“It takes strength to admit failure. But more strength to do something about it.” Rayleigh says in a frankly unhelpful manner.

“You’re the one who said I can’t do anything! And you’re right, I can’t get to them, I can’t bring them back here myself. What is there to do?” he snaps angrily, he’s too pissed off and hurt for this kind of circular logic.

“You get stronger, so that next time you don’t lose that fight, or the one after it and the one after that. If you don’t get stronger from failure or you give up then this ocean will chew you up and spit you out and you’ll deserve it.” Rayleigh says harshly, pointing his finger at Sanji in accusation. For a second Sanji sees Zeff, and it’s not just the resemblance of any angry older man. That’s the kind of thing that Zeff would say to him, hell, it’s the kind of thing that Sanji himself would say to someone else. What the hell is wrong with him?

“I need to get stronger.” Sanji agrees with a nod. He won’t let his nakama down like that again.

“Then I can help with that.” Shakky says with a grin that Sanji is probably right to categorise as predatory. Sanji takes a nervous step back.

“You might not be that fond of being what you are, I know I wasn’t for the first year or so. But you have to realise that it makes you stronger than normal people.” Shakky says kindly, looking less dangerous. Sanji relaxes a little and frowns.

“As much as I hate to contradict a lady, I’m not sure I’ve met many normal people lately, and I don’t think I’ll find many in the New World.” Sanji says unhappily.

“That’s just without training, but I’m going to teach you.” Shakky says, sounding pleased with herself.

“Between her training, the bounty hunters and the people hunting for the auction house I’m sure you’ll get lots of experience, enough to grow stronger.” Rayleigh says with a grin.

“Auction house?” Shakky asks Rayleigh with a frown.

“His crew tried to free their mermaid friend and the captain punched a world noble in the face, that’s how this all got started. By the time I got to see him he’d drained and torn apart several people with a fair few witnesses around.” Rayleigh explains with a laugh, like Sanji’s whole crew and that debacle there, where Sanji became someone… something else was entertaining for him. He resists the urge to hiss at Rayleigh and instead restrains himself, he’s supposed to be learning that kind of thing.

“So now they know that they’re looking for a vampire and they do love their rare items in the trade, plus you have a bounty on your head. You’ve got a lot to learn if you want to stay in one piece until your friends get back here and I think that will help. Or you’ll die, whichever.” Shakky says with an easy shrug and serene smile and Sanji is suddenly reminded of Robin’s tendency to be unexpectedly grim.

“Excellent. Well, I’m going to move their ship somewhere harder to find, coat it, bring it back to the place we talked about and then leave. I think it would be smart for me to be away from here for a while.” Rayleigh says to Shakky.

“How long do you think you’ll be here?” Shakky asks, tucking her bobbed black hair behind her ear. “You’ve been gone for a long time already.”

“I’m not sure. I’ll stick around for a while and see which way the wind is blowing, keep a low profile and then leave. If I rush off in just a few days I’ll have the admirals on my tail and that will be a pain.” Rayleigh says with a weary sigh, as if the admirals were nothing more than a particularly irksome annoyance.

Sanji can’t help but wonder if that’s what they’ll be like when they’re older. When Luffy finds the One Piece, when Nami has her map, when Zoro is the greatest… when all of them have achieved their dreams will they think of people as powerful as Kuma as nothing more dangerous than a mouse? Sure, they’ve defeated warlords before, Crocodile and Moriah and there aren’t many crews out there that can say that, but they were far from being easy and the crew was just utterly defeated. Sanji grits his teeth. He’s sure that the others will take their loss the same way that he has, with anger and despair but eventually grit and determination. They will be stronger.

But if Rayleigh is leaving the island…

“If you leave how will my nakama get back here? I need to meet up with them again and I can’t do that if you’re not here! What if they meet up with you and I’m stranded here?” Sanji exclaims in panic, imagining the horror of being left behind in vivid detail. His nakama would never do that by choice but if they could never find him then they would have to go on. After all, most of them think that he’s dead. Well, deader than usual.

“Your crew are going to the New World aren’t they? Unless they’re planning on waltzing right through the so called holy land then they’re going to have to come through here again at some point. If they find me before I get back here, well, do you really think that I can’t find my way here again?” Rayleigh asks dryly, a quirk of amusement on his lips.

Shit, this guy was Roger’s first mate and Sanji just implied that he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, like he hadn’t just stopped an admiral and a logia user singlehandedly, like he hasn’t been travelling this sea for most of his life.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean it like that!” Sanji blurts out. He’s not really doing a lot to endear himself to the two of them is he? Shakky’s offering to train him and Rayleigh is coating their ship for free and putting his neck out to save them. Hell, Rayleigh saved the crew from having to fight Kizaru which mostly likely is why the crew is separated from each other rather than separated from themselves in the form of being dismembered with light beams.

“I meant…” Sanji searches around haphazardly for an explanation that he can pass off to make it seem like he wasn’t being a total moron, but after a moment it occurs to him that Rayleigh is old enough to know better. He’d never managed to fool Zeff when he lied and Zeff, whilst a fearsome pirate, wasn’t on Roger’s crew. If he couldn’t bullshit his old man it’s likely that he can’t pull it off with Rayleigh either. What was that about a strong man admitting failure.

“Okay, I did mean it. And it’s not that I’m not grateful for your help, because I absolutely am. We’d probably all be dead without you. It’s just that my nakama are the most important thing in the world to me, getting them back is all that I can think of.” He says, his voice tight.

“I don’t like being unable to protect them, that whole fight back there… being overpowered and then stopped by whatever that did to me,” Sanji says, gesturing to the wood.

“It’s one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me, so to give that kind of control to someone else is…” Sanji searches for a word that’s not outright insulting.

“It feels like it’s the last thing that I want to do. But… it seems like I don’t have much choice in the matter, I’ve got to believe that they’ll find their way here or to you and that you’ll help us. I trust them to do anything that they have to do to get back here and back together, but that includes me, so if what I have to do is trust you, stay put and train… then that’s what I’ll do.” Sanji finishes. He hates this situation but he’ll work with it.

Rayleigh watches him for a few moments with a somewhat nostalgic and thoughtful smile and then chuckles softly.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a crew like yours. I wouldn’t have helped out if I didn’t see something in the lot of you. If the rest of your crew as individuals are willing to sacrifice their own pride and goals for a while to get back together then I’m sure you won’t be waiting long for them. I’ll bring them back if they find me first, you have my word.” Rayleigh promises with a warm smile.

“Right then, coating.” The man says, seeming to shake off the heavy air that had settled around them. He dusts his clothes off for a moment before turning to Sanji and Shakky.

“Shakky, try not to have too much fun. And Sanji… good luck, you’ll need it.” the old man laughs, looking between the two of them.

“Get going already old man.” The woman says, shooing him off with a wave of her hand.

“Oh yeah, I’m old.” Rayleigh laughs quietly and saunters out of the door. Sanji frowns, Rayleigh is old, but if Shakky is undead like him then it’s possible that she doesn’t age so maybe Rayleigh means that Shakky is older than him.

He looks up at her and sees her watching him with an arched eyebrow. Clearly she’s waiting for him to catch up.

“A gentleman never asks a lady that kind of question.” Sanji informs her with full sincerity.

“So you do have some tact then.” She says slyly and Sanji has the vague feeling that he may have gone up in her estimation somehow.

“A gentleman also wouldn’t stand around looking like something out of a horror story. Go follow that stupid old man and get what you need from your ship, you’ll be staying with me for a while and if you don’t want everyone to know where your ship is then you’d be wise not to keep running back there. Now go.” She says, giving him a small push in the back.

Sanji nods and rushes out of the door. He spots Rayleigh in the distance, heading towards the secluded area where they docked the Sunny. Sanji doesn’t say anything to Rayleigh on the way there, not wishing to risk screwing up with him again, not now that he finally seems to have got on his good side.

When they get there Sanji has to just stand there for a moment and look. The bright yellow and red painting on the top roofs of the crow’s nest and Zoro’s gym, the bright yellow lion’s head and their jolly roger on the main sail. It looks exactly as it did earlier today when he’d left it in a hurry to perform what was possibly the worst rescue anyone has ever performed.

He leaps up and lands on deck, the fresh green grass softening his landing and making him soundless. To his left sits the low table and on it two abandoned cups of tea, long since cold from where Franky and Usopp left them in a hurry. He breathes in and smells the citrus scent of Nami’s trees, the warm scent of adam wood and the familiar jumble of smells of everything put together that makes it home. Something tangles in his chest as Sanji realises that it feels like he could just turn around and come face first into one of Luffy’s barrelling hugs that flings him across the ship. He looks up and part of him is surprised when he doesn’t see Zoro’s shadow playing on the window in the weights room, he feels like Robin should come down the steps by the deck, her nose buried in a book as she walks.

Sanji shoves his feelings aside. His nakama will be back, they will be on this ship again and before Sanji knows it this whole thing will just be a memory. Being stuck on the fucking rock with Zeff was hell, it altered his life in ways that still affect him but it’s still just a memory now, there are long stretches of time where he doesn’t even think fleetingly of it. Eventually this separation will be just the same, a painful memory that will no doubt haunt him, but one that’ll be in the past, one that will force him to be stronger to survive it. He will see them again.

Sanji notices Rayleigh watching him but ignores it. He heads below deck to the men’s bunk room and grabs two large rucksacks. The first he fills with his own clothes, his suits and shirts neatly folded, a few pairs of shoes and then other assorted clothes that make him look a little less dead.

With that done he heads back up again, past Rayleigh and into the kitchen. He may well not need to cook, he’s got no crew to cook for now and it’s not as if he and Shakky eat human food anymore. Even so he can’t stand to leave his knives behind or the few things that he took with him from the Baratie. His first cookbook with the first printed menu with a dish of his slid inside the jacket of the book and a picture of the whole lot of them together in the restaurant when they had a big event. He’s younger there, sixteen maybe, and standing right next to Zeff and grinning like a moron. He wonders if Zeff has a copy of this photo and what he’ll think when Sanji gets back to tell him that he’s found All Blue, he wonders what Zeff will make of what he is now. Sanji puts that thought to the side for now, there will no doubt be time in the small hours of the morning when Sanji isn’t asleep that it’ll come back to haunt him but for now it’s not needed.

He opens the fridge and sighs in displeasure at the fresh ingredients in it. Sure there aren’t as many as there could have been, he’d been intending on stocking up but now there’s no one here to eat them and he hates wasting food. He would take it back to Shakky’s but she doesn’t eat either so…

“Hey, old man!” Sanji calls, sticking his head out of the door. Rayleigh looks up at him and arches an eyebrow. Oh yeah, that tact and manners thing, he’d forgotten about that. Again.

“You’re going to be staying on the ship when you coat it right? You said that you’re moving it somewhere else?” He asks, loud enough for the guy to hear him.

“That’s what I said.” Rayleigh replies with a slightly intrigued tone to his voice.

“There’s food in the fridge and basic cooking staples here. Will you promise me that you’ll eat it? When you’re finished let me know and I’ll get the rest of the food out, I’m a cook and I won’t see it go to waste, even if I have to give it away to anyone who’ll take it.” he says firmly. He doesn’t care if he has to go into town and risk getting caught by bounty hunters, there’s always someone who needs food and it’d be a crime in his book to just let it spoil here.

“I’ll never turn down a free meal.” Rayleigh replies happily.

“Hah, I thought you’d said you were a retired pirate?” Sanji laughs loudly.

“I guess you can take the man out of the ocean, but you can’t take the ocean out of the man. I’d say I’m maybe just retired from doing any real trouble making but I suppose I can’t say that anymore. I’m not too good at being retired!” Rayleigh laughs heartily and Sanji grins.

“Well, that’s everything that I need. I guess the rest is up to you then.” Sanji says as he leaps down onto the lawn deck again. He heads over to the railing and rests his hand on the sun warmed adam wood. He turns back to Rayleigh with a thought.

“The ship’s name is the Thousand Sunny. Sunny’s one of my nakama too, so I guess this is another one that I’m trusting you with. Just so you know.” He says quietly, remembering Merry with a sting in his heart.

“Understood.” the old man nods.

“Oh, and one last thing. If you see any of my nakama before I do… tell them that I’m okay. They’re probably going through hell if they think that I’m dead. Well, deader than usual.” Sanji says with a zing of amusement in his heart at the end. He’s going to have to write down all of his skull jokes whilst Brook is away so that he can share them with the other man when he gets back, he wouldn’t want him to miss out.

He waves goodbye to the old pirate and gets his feet back onto the slightly sticky ground of Sabody and heads back to Shakky’s and what will be his temporary home until his nakama all make their way back here.


	14. Chapter 14

“I think I should start at the beginning.” Shakky says with a firm nod. If Shakky wasn’t a lady Sanji knows that he would say something like ‘what other place would you fucking start at?’ but he bites it back because Shakky is a lady, though for some reason he has a hard time remembering it.

 

“Can I ask a question?” He asks cautiously.

 

“You just did, would you like to ask another?” she laughs slightly and Sanji again has to bite back irritation that he usually wouldn’t feel for a lady.

 

“Is there a cure? For vampirism I mean.” Sanji asks carefully.

 

For a while Shakky doesn’t say anything. She leans back in her seat a little and tucks her hair behind her ear and gives him a scrutinizing look that Sanji has trouble reading into. Is there some expression on his face that she’s looking for? Some tone in his voice that she’s judging him on?

 

“Why do you want to know?” She eventually asks.

 

“Because… it seems like a normal question to ask. I didn’t exactly want to be dead you know. It’s made a lot of things hard.” Sanji complains, though one of the things in particular doesn’t quite match that statement.

 

“And?” Shakky asks, as if that’s not a valid reason.

 

“And something infected me and I died, wouldn’t you-” Sanji cuts himself off because if there is a cure and Shakky knows about it then either she wants to use it too but can’t for some reason or another, in which case he’d just be throwing that in her face. Or the other possibility is that she is happy with being what she and Sanji both are now and by asking to change he’ll be insulting her.

 

From the way that she’s pinning him down with a hard look he can guess that she’s not pleased either way.

 

“My nakama, the little reindeer with the pink hat…” Sanji starts again, trying to not stick his foot in his mouth all over again.

 

“I remember him.” she nods.

 

“He’s our doctor, he’s really good, but he’s just a kid in a lot of ways. When I died… he blamed himself. All of my nakama did but he really did, I got infected with something and he couldn’t cure me or save my life. And when I came back he still couldn’t put together a cure, no matter how hard he worked. If there’s anything out there I want to know about it.” He answers firmly. Shakky watches him for a long few moments, that seems to stretch out into almost minutes though he knows logically it can’t be that long. He’s pretty sure that she doesn’t buy that he’s just asking for Chopper, but accusing him of just asking for himself would be wrong.

 

The way she’s looking at him makes him feel caged in somehow, like he can’t move under the weight of her gaze. It seems to get heavier and heavier, stifling and oppressive and he doesn’t know if she’s doing it or if it’s something going on in his stupid undead brain or what. Either way he’s not backing down from his question. As suddenly as it came the feeling passes and Shakky shrugs with one shoulder.

 

“I’ll look into it.” She says nonchalantly.

 

“Can I ask you something else? Why do you feel… odd? When we first met in the bar and just now it felt… I don’t know, as if you were looking into my brain. Were you? I know that with Zoro I can feel what he feels but can you actually read my mind? Is that what it is?” Sanji asks uneasily. He had assured Zoro time and again that he wasn’t able to hear his thoughts, and he felt a little creepy just being able to feel what he did off of Zoro, not that it was enough for him to be able to resist having a look whenever Zoro’s state wasn’t obvious from looking at him. The idea that someone else could be reading his every thought, especially someone he doesn’t know that well, makes him fell ill at ease.

 

“It’s nothing like that, though I’m intrigued that you had that close of a connection with someone so soon after turning. You two must be very involved with one another.” She says with a smile, leaning forward to rest her chin on her palm and watching him intently.

 

“I- how did you? I mean- what do you mean by that?” Sanji flounders. It’s not that he’s ashamed of what he has with Zoro, far from it, but suddenly having it thrown at him him like that isn’t good! Shakky just laughs and Sanji has the distinct impression that she is laughing at him.

 

“Nothing at all. As for the feeling you have, a sense of unease I suppose, it’s simply the reaction to one of your own kind, especially to someone older and stronger than you. Like a bird fearing a cat.” She explains, still keeping that unnerving smile on her face.

 

The fact that Shakky isn’t human and his senses pick that up is perhaps why she’s not pinging him as female. It’s not that he’s being rude to her like he would to a man, he’s still got some fucking manners after all, he knows how a lady should be treated. But usually with him it’s a knee jerk reflex as much as breathing, he thinks that if he was fighting near a door and a lady walked by he’d still open it for her and flutter without a thought to himself. The fact that it’s so unlike him is probably what’s setting him on edge just as much as this… prey instinct or whatever it is that Shakky wants to call it.

 

Sanji’s lips purse together as he thinks, it’s not the flat line that it used to be when he did that, his oversized top and bottom fangs kind of give him an uneven profile to his mouth. Why is Zoro sleeping with him again? Oh yeah, his smoking hot- ah… room temperature body. But the teeth thing gives him another question.

 

“Another question, if you’re like me then why do your teeth look normal?” He asks with a frown, opening his own mouth to display his sharp fangs. Not that Shakky is unacquainted with them, she’s stuck her hand in his mouth to feel them before after all.

 

“Like this you mean?” Shakky says with a smile that grows wider and suddenly her canines snap downwards and her lower ones shoot up. Her upper lip pulls back in a snarl that has Sanji swallowing hard and fighting to stay his ground, he doesn’t want to fight her but running away isn’t exactly a thing that he does easily either. He clenches his fists and teeth, tilting his jaw in a subconscious ‘you don’t scare me’ gesture that the few pirates of the Grand Line that have scared him have seen. He’s never liked advertising his fear. After all, lose your head, lose the fight.

 

Shakky laughs, a bright tinkling sound that’s different from her usual wry chuckle of amusement that Sanji has got used to hearing since he’s been staying with her. He watches as her fangs snap back into line with the rest of her teeth and Sanji is suddenly reminded of a snake and how some of their teeth work.

 

“When will mine do that then?” He questions, absently reaching up and pressing against one of his with his thumb. If these things can retract into his head he’s going to feel ten different kinds of stupid. They don’t budge though and in the war of pressure it’s his thumb that splits open on the knife sharp edge of his tooth. He jolts in shock because hands and, no matter how long he’s had healing abilities, hurting his hands still is so WRONG. The cut heals up straight away and Sanji’s internal freak out calms down.

 

“In about a year, maybe a little more. Like I said before they’re baby teeth. Your jaw will adjust and they’ll fall out and you’ll get ones like mine, better for blending in as human, which brings me to my first lesson if you’re done asking questions.” She explains and arches a perfectly shaped eyebrow at him. Sanji cringes in embarrassment. He’s always been a shit student as Zeff would attest to in a heartbeat. ‘If you listened half as much as you talked eggplant you’d actually LEARN something!’

 

“Sorry.” Sanji apologises with swallowed pride, “I’ve never had anyone to ask is all.”

 

Shakky’s expression changes to a pitying kind of ‘Oh honey, no’ and Sanji bristles up again and growls at her. Again, it’s against his manners but pity is something he’s never liked and he’s never ever wanted to put himself in a position where a woman would feel that for him.

 

“Sit down.” Shakky says, classily ignoring his little feral outburst. Sanji breathes out a calming huff of air and settles himself into the seat in the booth opposite her.

 

“Okay, we’re going to put your through ‘passing as human for beginners’.” Shakky says firmly.

 

“I pass for human, except for these I guess.” he responds and points to his particular dentition.

 

“You really don’t.” She says flatly.

 

“You’re too still for one thing.” She says, shifting forward in her seat to gesture to Sanji’s whole body.

 

“Humans are fidgety. Their joints get sore and their muscles get tired so their bodies shift them around to keep that from happening. They don’t even notice it but they certainly find it odd when people don’t.” She explains and the two of them fall silent for a minute as she looks at him pointedly, daring him to deny her again. Sanji pays attention to himself for a moment and realises that he’s not moving at all, then he looks at Shakky and sees the way that she moves subtly now at then.

 

“Oh.” He says after a moment.

 

“Secondly, unless you’re doing it as part of an expression or when you speak, you don’t breathe or blink. That kind of thing creeps humans out and it won’t take even the dumbest human long to put your mouth and your inhuman demeanour down and come up with a damn good guess at what you are.” Shakky says firmly.

 

Sanji frowns. His nakama had never said anything but he knows that they were ill at ease with him for a little bit, but that passed pretty fast, but he supposes that he wasn’t trying to pretend that he was anything other than what he is. As for Camie, Hatchan and Pappag, well, maybe they didn’t see humans often enough to notice or maybe they were just too grateful to the crew to go around calling one of them weird. With Duval he had spent a large bunch of their contact fighting him or yelling at him constantly, plus Duval was about as sharp as a bag of hammers and again was in his debt.

 

“It’s just practice and habit. There are things that help though, smoking is a good cover for breathing, it makes you remember to do it and it’s obvious. I’d suggest taking it up.” She advises him and slides out of the booth, her lesson clearly over.

 

“Way ahead of you, madame.” Sanji says with a flourish, producing his packet of cigarettes from his pocket, though he’s still down a lighter.  

 

“Good boy.” She grins, ruffling his hair thoroughly as she saunters past to the bar. Sanji squawks in alarm and fixes his hair properly so that he doesn’t look like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.

 

“Also, I think you owe me for all of these lessons and letting you stay here out of the goodness of my cold dead heart, so whenever you’re not training, you’ll be working here to pay me back.” She says brightly and somewhere in the back of Sanji’s mind he’s sure that Zoro would be making a comment about him having a ‘type’ with women. Zoro’s mentioned before that Sanji might as well have ‘sucker’ written on his head in an ink that only women could see, but the end of his sentence always got a little muffled when he said that sort of thing, perhaps because of Sanji’s foot being planted in his face, but who could say?

 

“That sounds fair. My old man and I used to have a restaurant, the Baratie. Obviously I don’t work there now but I’ve got plenty of experience.” He volunteers as he gets up to follow her.

 

“Oh good, how’s your customer service?” Shakky asks over her shoulder and settles herself behind the bar. Sanji pauses thoughtfully, lying to her is probably not a great idea.

 

“Depends on the customer. My old man disapproved of me kicking the asses of rude bastards, amongst other things.” He answers with a shrug, he probably can do with skipping mentioning how he was always flirting with the female customers. It’s not going to be so much of an issue any more.

 

“Just try not to kill anyone and it’ll be fine. If you do kill someone let me know, I don’t want to be late to dinner.” Shakky says in a dark and sinister tone of voice. He supposes he should probably ask her where she gets her blood from, or where he’s going to get his from now that his meal of choice and lover has been slapped to who knows where across the Grand Line.

 

“Well, the minimum prices are up here.” Shakky says, disrupting his train of thought and tapping a sheet of paper above the bar that Sanji can see when he walks up next to her. It’s got a list of drinks as well as a note to charge extra for the hassle of making a cocktail as well as the ingredients in it.

 

“What do you mean minimum prices?” He asks, looking at her curiously.

 

“Oh, I add percentages onto the bill depending on how I feel about the people ordering. 5% moron tax, 10% for not looking me in the eye, 20% for coming in here smelling like piss. Or did you somehow miss the sign above the door?” She asks with a devious expression on her face. Shakky’s rip-off bar indeed.

 

“Can I choose my own additional fees?” Sanji asks, with a slowly spreading fanged grin on his face.

 

“Absolutely. Have fun, and practice what I told you.” she calls out, sauntering off out of Sanji’s sight and upstairs into her own rooms.

 

Sanji stands in place at the bar and focuses on breathing in and out without sounding like he’s hyperventilating or breathing like some creep spying on women through keyholes. Not that Sanji’s ever done that to a lady. Nope. Never. Within a couple of hours it’s starting to get to evening time and a group of three pirates wanders into the bar. Sanji slides a cigarette between his teeth and lights it with the lighter that he found under the bar, though he really should go out and buy a new one of his own soon, as well as new smokes too.

 

“Hey, three beers. That… octopus one.. there.” The lead guy says, his ugly beard and stupid hat making Sanji note an extra 5% onto their bill.

 

“The dark ink beer?” Sanji clarifies, pulling three out of the glass fridge.

 

“Yeah, you blind or something?” The guy snorts. Sanji glares and ups the amount to 10% extra. Sanji looks up at the price list above the bar and does a little mental maths.

 

“Holy shit what’s wrong with your teeth?!” The guy balks. Sanji gives him a flat level look and blows smoke right in his face. That looks like a solid 30% extra right there. Sanji pops the caps off of the bottles with quick and practiced ease.

 

“3900 Beli.” He says flatly and the guy’s eyes widen considerably, he stops staring at Sanji’s teeth and instead gawps at Sanji.

 

“For three beers?!” The guy exclaims.

 

“You want I should round it up to 4000?” Sanji asks and stares back and him flatly. He then remembers that he’s supposed to be blinking, he does it slow and in what he hopes is a rather bored fashion. The guy grits his teeth angrily and forks over his money with an accusatory grumble.

 

“Let me know if you want anything else.” Sanji says with bright satisfaction and shoves the money in the till, handing the guy back his change. The unfashionable rude asshole goes back to his friends and Sanji has to restrain himself from smiling the biggest and most obviously fanged smile ever, he’s pretty sure that he’s going to like it here.

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

On the morning of the second day after the crew’s separation Shakky walks into the bar with some new alcohol and something else in her hand. Sanji only realises that it’s several newspapers when she throws the stack at him and they skid across the bar.

 

Sanji pauses, the one on top has the words ‘Sabody Bubble News’ emblazoned across the top page. He doesn’t even need to open that one to see why she’s thrown it at her.

 

“Aw shit.” Sanji mutters and pulls it a little closer. The picture one page front and centre is of their showdown with the marines outside of the auction house, Sanji can spot himself covered in blood with a foot in a marine’s face.

 

‘Strawhat Luffy led a violent assault on Saint Charloss at the human auction house on Monday. Pandemonium followed the incident and the entire Straw Hat Crew as well as Trafalgar Law and Eustass Kid and members of their respective crews. These pirates led a terrifying attack on the Marines and civilians alike, injuring hundreds with fifty confirmed fatalities already, the most gruesome of which was reportedly committed by Black Leg Sanji who reportedly tore apart and drained several people in what terrified witnesses are describing as a vampiric attack.

 

The Marines have assured worried residents of Sabody that all of the Straw Hat pirates have been dispersed, Black Leg Sanji was reportedly killed in the attack, although no body was found-’

 

Sanji looks up in horror, if his old man sees this then-

 

“Tell me that this isn’t shown outside of Sabody!” Sanji begs.

 

“It’s not, and when I snuck into the bounty hunters bars it seems like HQ isn’t as convinced, your bounty hasn’t been retracted yet. Evidently Kizaru doesn’t believe a kill until he has the body. The second set of papers is what is more important.” Shakky says with a slow smile.

 

Sanji shifts the paper aside for now, though he’s going to read the article intensely later. This paper isn’t an official newspaper like the Bubble News was, this is more of a leaflet. It seems to be printed in an amaturish way and Sanji flicks through it, he notices that it’s mostly charts. He scans the page and sees that it’s the current going rates at each auction house’s suggested price for it’s “items”. Humans with devil’s fruits, divided by type, humans without, humans by gender, fishmen by gender and so on. When he flips to the centre page his whole body tenses.

 

‘All auction houses are putting a call out for one Black Leg Sanji, with a current bounty of 77,000,000 Beli set by Marine HQ. The Human Auction house however has solid evidence that this man is in fact a vampire, the only known one in existence. Furthermore photographic evidence (above) indicates that Black Leg Sanji is still on Sabody. In response to this news the following suggested sale prices for each house are as follows:

The Human Auction House: 130,000,000 Beli

Slave Market: 125,000,000 Beli...’

 

Sanji scrolls down the list 130,000,000 Beli is still the highest offer but every single place has an offer on him and all of them are higher than what the marines are offering for him. If anyone on Sabody gets their hands on him it won’t be the Marines that he ends up with.

 

“At least it’s higher than Zoro’s bounty.” Sanji mumbles numbly.

 

The photograph above is from last night, where Sanji slipped out to get smokes so that he could abide by Shakky’s advice of smoking to appear human. He’d lit up right outside the shop as the owner was leaving and his face is lit by the flame of his new lighter. His fangs are completely visible as they hold his cigarette in place and the light throws creepy shadows and gives him a thoroughly inhuman appearance.

 

“You made it two days before they found out what you were, now you’d better hope that I can teach you enough ways to evade them before you end up shackled up on stage for the highest bidder.” Shakky says flatly, her tone clearly unimpressed.

 

Sanji realises that there’s one last paper left, this one at least is one that he’s familiar with. It’s the same paper that is delivered across the world and the one that Nami and Robin read whenever they can. To be honest Sanji usually looks over it as well but he’s not quite as obsessed with it as his lovely ladies. The fight on Sabody gets a mention, though thankfully there’s no note about Sanji’s supposed death which is a relief, that way if Zeff were to get a hold of the paper he wouldn’t believe something so terribly wrong.

 

Something does catch his eye though, several pages in he sees an article that has his heart sinking. The newspaper article is talking about the probability of a huge fight taking place soon, apparently the Marines have pissed off Whitebeard, a name that even Sanji knows. Normally he’d be all for high up Marines and Shichibukai getting into a brawl with someone as dangerous as Whitebeard and his crew, it’d be sure to leave the Marines and Shichibukai with a decent amount of pain. Nami would probably be very concerned about the potential instability it could cause and how it might affect them, but it’s the reason for the fight that has Sanji’s heart feeling like lead.

 

Portagas D. Ace is going to be executed.

 

“Luffy’s not coming back here right away.” Sanji says numbly.

 

“How do you mean?” Shakky asks with a frown, having obviously not brought him this paper for that reason, perhaps this one was for her. He supposes that the number of people who know of Ace and Luffy’s relationship is small.

 

“Luffy’s brother is going to be executed. They’re doing it in a week.” Sanji answers, holding up the paper with the article open. There’s a picture of Ace’s bounty poster as well as the article itself. Shakky swears under her breath as she reads.

 

“I know my captain, wherever he is he’ll do anything possible to get there in time.” Sanji says firmly. Luffy would do the same for any of them, his brother is no exception to that rule at all. He had seen how much Luffy adored his brother, their relationship might be a little odd but there was love there and Luffy doesn’t let the people he love get hurt. Worse still he knows full well that Luffy will feel like shit over them all being split up, if anything that’s understating it, he heard that anguish in his scream when Luffy thought that he’d lost everyone and that Sanji was dead. Sanji feels a deep and permanent guilt over not being able to stop their separation and Luffy will feel worse, he’s their captain and it’s his job to keep them safe and together. Sanji doesn’t hold him responsible at all, the whole crew is responsible for keeping everyone safe, but Luffy won’t see it like that, not right now at least. The last thing Luffy will be willing to do is to let another person he loves be harmed.

 

“Can I get there in time?” Sanji asks seriously. Shakky looks up at him and stays silent for a moment.

 

“You’d go there?” She asks him after a moment.

 

“My captain will be there and he’ll need all of the help he can get, if I can help I will.” Sanji answers firmly.

 

“Your whole crew nearly died fighting one Shichibukai, you’re an idiot if you think that they won’t all be there. But even if you were going to be that dumb and try to steer your own ship all the way there by yourself you’d never get there in a week, you couldn’t get there in a month from here unless you had a Marine equipped ship, which you don’t. There’s simply no way.” Shakky says with a shake of her head.

 

“Shit.” Sanji hisses, another way that he can’t help his nakama. Great.

 

“Worry about yourself, idiot. Every money hungry person on this island is going to be after you and they’re not stupid enough to go at it one on one, not after the news about you. You need to learn to evade them, come with me.” the lady vampire says, tugging on Sanji’s tie and leading him to the door out the back and forcing Sanji to leave the newspapers inside.

 

Sanji doesn't know if she's trying to distract him from his so called stupidity but he supposes that if what she says is true, that he has no chance of getting there, then the least that he can do is to try to make himself stronger for when Luffy does see him again.

 

"You need to be able to evade capture." Shakky says firmly as she takes him a short distance from the bar.

 

"I'm already pretty good at that, I'm fast." Sanji says. It's not a boast, it's true, especially since he died.

 

"Fast isn't fast enough, you need to be literally uncatchable." Shakky says slyly. Sanji feels the corner of his mouth tug down as he considers this. He's met people faster than him before, hell Zoro can still catch him just as often as Sanji can evade him, more or less anyway. Their fights would be no fun if he couldn't. He's not likely to need to evade Zoro but there are other people out there that are as fast as him and faster. Kizaru could travel at the speed of light after all and no amount of running and evasive actions can be faster than that.

 

"Uncatchable sounds good." Sanji admits, though he's not even sure that's a word.

 

"It is, there's a few methods of doing it, but this is the easiest of them. I'd not planned on teaching you this so soon, but you've very much forced my hand." She says and Sanji feels a flush of guilt.

 

"Try to attack me, grab me." She says firmly.

 

Sanji's eyes widen and regardless of the fact that she doesn't quite hit his radar the same way that living women still do to an extent and much less than all women did before he died, she still IS a woman.

 

"I'll never fight a woman, or hurt one, I won't grab you either." Sanji says firmly.

 

"That kind of attitude will get you killed." Shakky says flatly and now she looks exceedingly displeased at him.

 

"Sorry, it's what I feel. And I'm already dead anyway." He says with conviction.

 

"Your encounter with that tree should have taught you that you're nowhere near as immortal as you might believe. Or do I need to shove a stake through you again to make you remember?" She points out and Sanji readies his muscles ready to run, though it's probably pointless. He won't speculate as to how old Shakky actually is, but she's older than him for sure, even if they were both human still she would be, but she's definitely been a vampire longer than he has by FAR. If she's trying to teach him how to survive and be fast then it's highly likely that she's faster than him too. He reminds himself yet again that she is not a woman that he wants to piss off at all.

 

"If you won't fight me then this training won't work and you'll do nothing for your nakama. If they really mean more to you than anything in the world, then they should mean more to you than these sort of principles." Shakky continues harshly and Sanji winces. He won't let anything like that ever happen to them again, but attacking a woman... the thought makes him feel wrong all over.

 

"Maybe if... if it's to help them... and you're ordering me to then I couldn't say no. Refusing a request from a lady would be rude and if it was just limited to you then..." Sanji says painfully, trying to warp the logic around to maintain both promises.

 

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, or not." Shakky gives him a thoroughly unimpressed look and sighs as she speaks.

 

"Go on then." She urges him.

 

Sanji steels himself and shoves down the feeling of wrongness. He doesn't want to hold back too much when he goes for her, that would be an insult and insulting a lady is a terrible thing. He shakes his head and forces himself to think of something, anything else. He looks at her and feels like he's ripping apart inside, being pulled in different contradictory directions.

 

He forces himself to think of something else, some way around it. He looks at her and tries to force the image of Zoro over her, if it was Zoro asking him to try to attack him or catch him for training he'd do it in a heartbeat.

 

So to speak.

 

He imagines Zoro as hard as he can and leaps for her. She doesn't move and he holds his arms out for her shoulders, hoping to catch her and roll so that he doesn't hurt her. Before his hands touch her though she vanishes somehow and Sanji feels something slightly damp on his face and then the hard and slightly sticky ground of Sabody on his face.

 

Sanji rolls back from his graceless landing and stares at where Shakky was, in her place is just a haze of smoke or mist. His first thought is that it's smoke and that she's a devil's fruit user but there's no two devil's fruits the same and Smoker already has the smoke-smoke fruit. So... mist maybe? That seems awfully like smoke though, do fruits get that similar to each other? Furthermore if he can't drink from a devil's fruit user would it even be possible for a fruit user to be a vampire in the first place?

 

Before he can question it further Shakky reforms, in a haze at first but then solidifying into her real shape, with an extra smug grin that hadn't been there before.

 

"Uncatchable." She says smartly.

 

"Okay, so... how did you do that and what exactly is that anyway?" Sanji asks, standing up and trying to wipe some of the sticky residue off of his clothes.

 

"Technically it's turning into mist, but I like to think of it as a cloud. I'm not sure if those are the same thing and just called separate names because of altitude." Shakky wonders aloud.

 

"Nami would know, I'll ask her when she eventually gets back here." Sanji says absently and then is immediately struck by a pang of longing for his beautiful navigator.

 

“In order to be able to do this, you need to think of yourself as elusive, lighter than air and intangible. You need to visualise your enemies simply passing through you.” Shakky says wisely.

 

“That… sounds like a lot to think about when someone is running at me.” He says uneasily. If someone leapt at him as fast as Zoro could then there’s no way that he could focus on all of that in time. Then again, he’s sure that if he was to try to explain his Diablo Jambe to someone it’d sound just as complex if not more. Even if someone else could do it it’d be hard getting them to feel and think in a fight what he does out of reflex now, he doesn’t think about how to do it, he just wants to do it and then does it. This isn’t impossible at all, he just needs to train.

 

“I’ll work on it.” He says with a nod before Shakky can tell him what he’s already thinking.

 

“I’ll be inside, let me know if you need any more help.” She says with an air of curiosity.

 

Sanji settles himself into a fighting stance, his back to the bar and closes his eyes. He tries to imagine himself being nothing more than vapor, he imagines his opponent flying through him just like he did with Shakky. The feel of his feet in his shoes and his shoes on the ground let him know without opening his eyes that nothing is happening.

 

He visualises it, himself dissipating, how he’ll feel when he does it, his triumph and how natural the ability feels. If all vampires can do this with training then he can too and it’ll feel just as right to him as biting Zoro does. Hm, that’s a thought, maybe it’ll work if he imagines that the person leaping for him is Zoro, Zoro often brings out the toughest things in him. Half of the reason that his Diablo Jambe is so good is all of the times he tried to use it on Zoro’s face.

 

Okay then. He imagines Zoro standing a few good paces away from him, swords in his hands and devious grin on his face. He knows the set to Zoro’s jaw and the tension in his shoulders when he’s about to strike, he knows it by heart because those are the only signals Sanji gets to let him know they’re about to throwdown. The imaginary Zoro’s legs tense ever so slightly, the tell that Sanji has got used to and suddenly the man is flying towards him. Sanji focuses and the imaginary Zoro flies right through him. Sanji opens his eyes in surprise but he’s still solid, it’s just his imagination being good then.

 

Still, that seemed to work better than an anonymous stranger attacking him.

 

He closes his eyes once more and visualises Zoro set up just like he was before, crouched and ready to fight. He imagines the man going through his intangible form several times to no physical success and evidently his mind wanders a little because the next time that he imagines it Zoro doesn’t fall through him. Instead Zoro’s warm body slams into him, Zoro’s arms going around Sanji’s shoulders to avoid killing him with his readied blades, the back of one sword pressing its cold steel into the nape of Sanji’s neck and Zoro is so close that Sanji could just lean in and-

 

And this is NOT what he’s supposed to be focusing on.

 

Sanji groans and sits down. Perhaps meditating on it is the answer. Sanji sits down on the grass, pushing Zoro from his mind and calming himself. He went through a small phase of meditating when he was about fourteen, a kind of hippie girl had got him into it as a way to ‘get in touch with his emotions’. He makes sure that he’s comfortable and focuses on his breathing. Oh yeah, he should probably be breathing. He starts breathing and focuses on the pattern of that first, then he lets his mind move on to the thought of being as light as air, as immaterial as breath. He is a whirl of wind and a cloud of smoke.

  
  


Sanji leaps up to the balcony of the abandoned building. It overlooks the square and is thoroughly shaded by trees. He's not the only one there though, Rayleigh is sat on the railing to the balcony and Shakky has just made it to his side, she got there before him as she always seems to. Sanji skids as he lands, put out by having been beaten in speed again and evidently without too much effort if the expression on Shakky's face is to be believed. He doesn't say anything to his mentor though, anything he could say would come off as sulky and he's not going to do that.

 

Rayleigh notes their appearance with an apathetic 'hm' and a slow swig of the bottle of alcohol in his hand. Sanji sniffs, whiskey.

 

Sanji hops up to plant his butt on the railing and looks down into the square. Giant display monitors are set up and rolling live footage of Marineford, the place that Ace is set to be executed. The square below is filled with reporters and their notebooks, cameramen taking pictures for the history books and hundreds of onlookers and nothing has really happened yet.

 

"Are they really all here to see this?" Sanji wonders aloud.

 

"It's not often you get to see something that changes history as much as this, not even in lives as long as ours Sanji." Shakky says quietly, her eyes on the crowd below.

 

"Isn't there a curse about that? 'May you live in interesting times'." Rayleigh says in a slightly dulled voice and takes another sip.

 

"Ever since Roger died it's been interesting, if you want to call it that. You were born into it Sanji, but this... this will change everything." She says with her eyes on the screens now.

 

"But Ace... even Whitebeard if he shows, they're just men, I know Roger changed the world with the news about One Piece but you can put the upheaval with that down to pirate greed or adventure or something. Ace is important, especially to Luffy but there's nothing anyone else has to gain from this, can it really be that important to them? Or are they just gawking at someone about to die?" Sanji wonders aloud.

 

"No one asked you to be here." Rayleigh points out.

 

"He's family to my captain, if I can't be there I'm sure as shit going to be here." Sanji snaps back firmly. He wishes he could be there for Luffy in person but if he can't then he at least owes it to him to watch and know what happens.

 

"Whitebeard will show, there's no doubt in my mind." Shakky says and looks sidelong at Rayleigh. Sanji wonders, not for the first time, just how involved the pair have been with all of the powerful pirates in the world. The Shichibukai, the admirals, the Yonko and even Roger himself. That last one Sanji knows for Rayleigh but Shakky has always kept her cards close to her chest about how old she is, who she knew and just what kind of pirate she used to be. Whatever it is it's clear that her and Rayleigh are having a conversation of their own over Sanji's head. He supposes that it's none of his business.

 

"He'll show." Rayleigh says with a nod.

 

"This will be war, a real war." Shakky says in a voice that's barely more than a breath.

 

"Yeah. That guy's not going to do this lightly, and if you're right about your captain showing up after what happened here and with Kizaru, well, if he survives then your whole crew's lives are going to be pretty interesting forever." Rayleigh warns him.

 

"Luffy's going to be the pirate king, it was always going to be 'interesting'." Sanji responds with absolute certainty and Rayleigh looks at him for a moment before laughing loudly. It's not mean, he's not mocking Sanji's faith or Luffy's dream, he just seems to be genuinely pleased at the idea.

 

"Interesting is certainly what you're going to get." Rayleigh says with a grin and then swigs his drink a little more.

 

Sanji has nothing more to say to that so he returns his gaze to the people below. He feels a little disgusted at them to be honest, obviously this is important but a man's death deserves some dignity, not to be a spectacle like this. But then again, if the marines ever caught his crew he highly doubts that they'd get quiet deaths. Sanji grits his teeth, all the more reason to never get caught. He eyes the podium where it's all planned to happen and knows that they intend to kill Ace by beheading him. Obviously they'll have seastone cuffs on him for it to work, trying to behead a logia user without them would be incredibly pointless, the blade would just go straight through. A thought occurs to him.

 

"Hey, Shakky... I survived getting shot through the chest once and that big stake in me, could I survive getting beheaded?" He asks curiously. Shakky hums thoughtfully for a moment.

 

"I've lost limbs before and if I've had time to stick them back to where they came off they repair pretty quick. I lost half a leg once though, it got completely ripped off and it took a month to grow back. Maybe if someone stuck your head back on for you you might. I've never seen one of us get completely killed, but if anything would do it I'd say that beheading us or destroying our brains would be the most likely. I'd suggest not trying it." She says in her slightly grim and curious voice. Yeah, she reminds him of Robin alright.

 

"Speaking of interesting news," Rayleigh says after a little while, "I read something interesting in the paper."

 

"Hm?" Sanji hums inquisitively, though he doesn't bother to take his eyes off of the crowd below. Ace is supposed to be taken up to the execution platform soon and there's still no sign of Luffy, Whitebeard or anyone.

 

"A strange local phenomenon has been observed by Sabody citizens and passing hunters. When wandering through the quieter sections of the island people have encountered what is reported as a cloud of screaming fog. All onlookers have fled before the cause of this odd pheno-" Rayleigh begins but Sanji lunges for the paper.

 

"Look, it's REALLY hard turning into fog to get away from people in the first place, so just- GIVE ME THAT!" Sanji snarls, trying to snatch it from Rayleigh's hands but the old man is doing a surprising job of moving his arm around quicker than Sanji can grab for it.

 

"I thought that it might be you." Rayleigh laughs.

 

"It's really hard turning back, okay? And being a disembodied haze of fog is really unnerving when you can't get back into physical form so I panicked a few times! I'm only human!" Sanji yells, trying to grab it again.

 

"Except you're not." Shakky laughs, she's had far too much fun teasing him about it when she read the paper. Up until then Sanji had kept his little difficulties with his new trick to himself. Frankly he feels like he should be praised for being able to do something so remarkable in such a short span of time, it'd be expected that he should have a few little kinks to work out of the technique.

 

"Give me that please Rayleigh, Sanji tore up my copy when I wasn't looking." Shakky says. The old man throws the paper and Shakky shoves Sanji out of the way and catches it easily. She quickly tears the article out of the paper and before Sanji is able to get his hands on it she shoves it down her top and into her bra. Sanji halts. As much as he'd usually like to get his hands on the ample bosom of a lady he's never been one to do it without permission and less inclined to do it since he died, furthermore Shakky would almost certainly maim him in horrible awful ways.

 

"I'm going to frame it and hang it up in the bar." She says in a pleased voice.

 

"Nooooo." Sanji groans, and falls down onto the ground of the balcony and bangs his head on the ledge repeatedly. His afterlife sucks.

 

"And, if you try to take it down or break it I'll cut off your arms and not put them back on." She says lightly and gives him a threatening sharp toothed smile and a huge wave of that terrifying aura that set Sanji on edge around her in the first place.

 

"I won't touch it, I swear." He says quickly, the horror at having his arms and therefore his hands removed making it certain that he's never going to touch the thing and also that he'll kick the shit out of anyone else who does in case Shakky blames him.

 

"Oh, it's Ace." Sanji remarks, perking up slightly as something finally happens on screen.

 

From that point the three of them sit in silence and watch the screens, all joking and threats of dismemberment dropped. Sanji watches in horror as the biggest fight he's ever seen in his life breaks out. Whitebeard shows up alright but so does Luffy, in company with Crocodile, Buggy the Clown, Mr 3 and the oddest looking group of... men he's ever seen? Sanji thinks they're men anyway, not that the clothing fits that categorisation. Sanji doesn't think that Luffy could have shown up with a stranger group of people and he can't imagine what kind of circumstances could have possibly put him in league with them. He's sure he'll hear all about it later but in the meantime they set about creating a hell of a lot of chaos. As for Whitebeard and his crew, they are a fearsome group and Sanji can instantly see why Whitebeard is regarded as the powerful man that he is. His crew have a hell of a lot of fruit users and incredibly skilled fighters without. One fruit user even manages to stop Mihawk's blade and Sanji thinks that Zoro would about die if he got the chance to see Mihawk in action. If Zoro doesn't see this fight and Sanji does then he's going to have to tell Zoro all about it, it's not like Zoro often gets to see the man that he'll eventually take down. The last time Zoro saw him still gives Sanji the creeps at how close to dying and failing his dream he came, but he's stronger for it. Maybe if there's a record of the fight somewhere Zoro would be able to watch Mihawk's techniques and learn from them, it'll probably be the only chance he'll get to see the man fight for real before he eventually fights him in person.

 

Sanji's mind grinds to a terrified halt when he sees Luffy alone against Kizaru and Kuma all at once, the two people whom days ago had threatened the very lives of their crew as a whole and now Luffy was up against them alone. Only... only he's not alone because somehow Luffy has convinced the bunch of lunatics that got there with him to back him up. Only Luffy would be able to make such strange friends and such loyal ones in the time since Sanji last laid his eyes on him. He’s saved by a massive explosion that seems to be an attack from a creepy looking, giant headed, make-up wearing man in a pleather leotard and fishnets.

 

Sanji's heart aches for Luffy when his brother tells him that he doesn't want him there, to go and that he's too weak to be there. It's obvious to anyone with eyeballs that Ace is still trying to keep his brother safe and out of harm's way but Luffy isn't going to listen to that, he never would. Ace probably knew that too, he's known Luffy for longer than Sanji ever has after all. Still if it was Sanji up there, well... he's not sure what he'd do. He'd want Luffy to be safe and if that meant away from him then that'd be what he'd want. But he doesn't think he'd tell Luffy to go. If his crew were trying to rescue him he thinks that he'd put his faith in them to do it. It's not to say that he wouldn't be on edge and terrified for them the entire time, but they're his nakama, he trusts them.

 

The camera focuses in on Ace and Sanji sees the swords ready and come down for him, knowing full well that Luffy isn’t close enough to be able to do anything to stop them. Sanji’s hands tighten on the balcony edge, making the stone crumble under his strength. Just as the swords are about to come down though they’re blown away by Crocodile. Sanji breathes a sigh of relief but he still can’t imagine how a man like that, a man that Luffy defeated, stole Robin from and robbed him of his position of Shichibukai would possibly want to help Luffy. Unless the man has some secret connection with Ace that he doesn’t know about, but that seems highly unlikely.

 

Sanji watches, hands now clasped over his mouth in horror as he sees Luffy stabbed, shot, beaten and thrown away like a ragdoll. He should be there with him, he should have Luffy’s back but instead he’s here watching it on screen and powerless all over again.

 

However Luffy, the man who will do everything possible to save the people he loves, does the impossible. He gets up there onto that execution platform. He and Ace fall to the floor off of the execution platform and instead of getting injured the two of them land on the ground safely in a swirl of fire, looking ready to take on the world back to back. They might… they might actually fucking do this. With Whitebeard there as well as Luffy’s utterly outrageous allies, they might be able to make a break for it and rescue Ace. If anyone can get Luffy back here it would be Whitebeard. He could be seeing Luffy in mere days! No sooner has Sanji thought that than Ace starts to fight with one of the admirals who’s logia type is lava and apparently even fire can be burned by lava. He takes several blows but it’s Luffy who ends up in the most danger with the admiral turning around to face Luffy with a lava fist raised and Sanji wants to scream. That’s his captain up there. His captain who is still injured from their fight here a little over a week ago, who is no doubt carrying injuries from wherever he landed to get to here, his captain who in the time that Sanji has been watching has been stabbed, sliced, shot, thrown, beaten and had the shit kicked out of him. Luffy is an incredible man who pushes the realms of the possible and impossible but he is still just a man. With that Admiral having a fist of lava and sending it flying at Luffy Sanji knows in every cold dead cell in his body that Luffy will die if he’s hit. That’s his captain up there, the man who encouraged him to chase his dream all over again, the man who drew Sanji together with the most incredible people he’s ever met, the man who Sanji has pledged his loyalty for and offered to trade his life for. That’s his captain, and he’s going to have to watch him die.

 

Luffy doesn’t die.

 

Luffy instead sits on the floor, Sanji can’t see his face but he can guess, as his brother holds himself over him with a fist burnt through his chest and death closing in. Luffy isn’t dead and Sanji is selfishly glad it was Ace and not him, but right now he’s not sure that Luffy would agree with him. A small wretched sound slips from Sanji’s lips and he realises that it’s the only sound in the entire square, everyone else is just staring at the screens dumbstruck. Some are tearing up or crying, despite knowing neither man, some are simply staring and others look like they can’t believe what they’re seeing.

 

Luffy is dragged off and Whitebeard personally leaps in to attack the admiral who killed Ace, his blows violent and unbelievably powerful, but he doesn’t get away unscathed. The admiral gets in a punch to the side of Whitebeard’s face, but that doesn’t stop the old man. He defeats the bastard and splits the island in two, putting the marines on one side and Luffy and the other fleeing pirates on the left. The camera stays on Whitebeard but Sanji wants to scream, he wants to stay with Luffy, if he can’t be there in person then he needs to see it here. There’s nothing he can do so maybe this is his way of punishing himself for not being there, but he doesn’t think that he could just read about this when he could have watched it. In his gut he feels like he owes it to Luffy, like he could take on his pain as Zoro did in Thriller Bark.

 

"So you kicked the bucket, huh Whitebeard?" Rayleigh says aloud and Sanji thinks that it's probably to himself rather than to the rest of them, despite the fact that Sanji can hear him. The old man takes a swig of his drink and then pours out a measure off of the balcony onto the thankfully unoccupied ground below. Sanji wonders again if when he's Rayleigh's age if he'll feel a kind of vague sadness and nostalgia when one of their fellow supernovas dies. Law and Kid aren't his nakama, and aren't even and kind of friends, but back at the auction house they all fought together and that was important. He thinks that if he learnt that one of them died like this then he might feel a twinge of something for them. They're clearly competent pirates for getting this far, hell, they all had bounties bigger than the marine's official bounty for him. So seeing them go down would be a little saddening, if only for seeing someone that could have been them taken down.

 

The crowd below are clearly not sharing Rayleigh’s sentiment and are instead cheering loudly about the death of Whitebeard. Sanji grits his teeth and growls, the sound reverberating in his chest in a way that he can’t hear over the noise but he can feel, it’s like his chest is filled with bees. Shakky smacks him in the chest with the flat of her hand.

 

“Stop that, people will feel it and know we’re here, and in case you forgot, you’re a wanted man.” She scolds him. Sanji glances down and sees a few people near the balcony looking a little unnerved though they thankfully don’t seem to know why.

 

“Two men just died and they’re celebrating!” He hisses, the noise starting up again. Shakky smacks him again and it cuts off as Sanji forces himself to bite down on the feeling. He’s seen someone he knows die today and his captain isn’t even conscious and he can’t see where he’s been taken because of the screens focusing on the wrong people.

 

“You’re pirates, you can’t expect people to support you. Besides, the public loves metaphorical blood as much as we love the actual stuff.” She says. He scowls at the idea but he’s thankfully distracted when the screens grab Sanji's attention and it seems like somehow Blackbeard has absorbed Whitebeard's powers. Sanji thinks he wouldn't understand how that happened even if he had been watching the screen at that moment. Sanji only realises when the same attacks that Whitebeard was using are suddenly being used by Blackbeard. The island starts to fall apart and crumble and the crowd below Sanji gasps on and looks in horror. The idea of one man having so much power, a man who qualified to be a Shichibukai having the power of two devil's fruits and two that powerful as well.

 

The people in the square below are obviously horrified at what's happening to the marines. Some people after all are under the mistaken illusion that the marines are good, which they absolutely are not. People are good, some marines individually are good. It's not as if when you join the marines you have to drown a bag of kittens or anything, but the whole organisation is corrupt and their definition of justice can't be questioned by anyone and it's a breeding ground for sadists the higher up the chain you go. The admiral who just burnt a hole through Ace's chest and tried to kill Luffy is proof enough of that, not to mention Kuma. But pirates themselves aren't saints by any means, again one look at Blackbeard will tell you that and Sanji's met some nasty pirates in his time for sure. Whitebeard's words have a lot of truth in them, evil and good aren't as clear cut as people like to think. Sanji's a pirate, a criminal and now a monster. He's no saint by any means, he can be cruel and merciless if he chooses. But he likes to think that he's a good person. He'd never let a man starve no matter what, he often helps people out to outrageous extremes, he cares for his friends and his nakama. That kind of grey shouldn't exist in people, not as far as the media is concerned, but it does.

 

“This really is going to change everything isn’t it?” Sanji asks uneasily.

 

“Absolutely.” Rayleigh confirms and Sanji doesn’t know how to feel about that. Maybe he can process it better when his nakama are back, but in the meantime there’s not much that he can do.

 

The video feed keeps cutting in and out and frustrating Sanji with its lack of Luffy related content. He keeps his eyes unblinkingly wide and open, scanning the feed whenever it shows up for Luffy’s hat, but when it shows up it’s not on Luffy’s head or around his neck. Instead that hat is in the hands of the man who Sanji can only presume from his appearance is the original owner of it.

 

“Shanks…” Rayleigh says, straightening up in surprise. The shot only lasts for a few seconds but he sees the man pass off Luffy’s hat to… is that LAW?!

 

“You said that I couldn’t have got there in time!” Sanji yells at Shakky and the woman hisses, dragging him into the shadow of the balcony before anyone sees him. Sanji kicks and squirms, he could have been there! Shakky’s grip on him is too tight though and Sanji squeezes his eyes shut. He is lightness, he is air and mist and rage. He passes through Shakky’s grip and reforms out of his haze away from her.

 

“How could you?!” He demands in utter betrayal.

 

“I… I didn’t think that you could get there that quickly.” She says and her expression is so genuinely shocked and regretful that Sanji buys it. He looks back to the screens but they’re on something else now. Shanks yelling at the marines and Sanji doesn’t care.

 

“Looked like a submarine to me. Interesting. It’d get you past the storms pretty well, and if you had a good engine well, hm.” Rayleigh hums thoughtfully.

 

“Is he even going to be okay? He wasn’t awake and if he was bad enough to lose his hat then- he can’t die, okay?!” Sanji babbles in terror.

 

“I suppose that wouldn’t need a coating if it was pressurised enough. Damn, if you all you pirates in this generation start doing this then I’m going to go out of business.” The old man continues, entirely ignoring Sanji.

 

“I need to find out where he’s going and get there, I need to help.” Sanji insists.

 

“If you’re going out of business maybe you’ll have to sell yourself to the slave traders again to get more money.” Shakky responds casually.

 

“Aren’t either of you listening to me?” Sanji asks miserably, full well knowing that the answer is no.

 

“Shakky, I’m going to head out. Not sure when I’ll be back.” Rayleigh says seriously, corking his bottle and shoving it in some hidden pouch inside his coat.

 

“You are a terrible business partner. Make sure not to break anything expensive so that you can start contributing to our funds again, ok?” Shakky says with an air of fond exasperation.

 

Sanji frowns, if the way that Luffy looked at the end there is any indication he’s likely not going to be going anywhere any time soon, certainly not back at Sabody like Sanji had hoped. In which case Rayleigh may well run into him before Sanji does, especially as it’s Rayleigh that Luffy has a vivre card to, not Sanji.

 

“If you see Luffy before I do… tell him that I’m not dead. I’m pretty sure that he knew that when Kuma sent him away but I need to be sure that he knows.” Sanji says to him.

 

“Actually,” Sanji says with a smile as the thought occurs, “tell him that I said for you to tell him that I am dead, but exactly as dead as I was before, not more dead. In those words.”

 

Sanji grins broadly, it’d be a better message to sent to Zoro, but it’ll make Luffy laugh and his captain probably needs some of that. The least that Sanji can do is to send him a skull joke via Rayleigh if he happens to see him before Sanji does.

 

“Hah, okay, I’ll do that.” Rayleigh laughs and leaves the shadowed balcony down the stone steps and disappears off through the crowd so seamlessly that it seems like the kind of vampire skills that Shakky should be teaching him.

 

“Come on, you’ve got a lot of training to do, the world’s going to be in a lot of upheaval now and you’re going to need all the skills you can get.” Shakky says, heading down the steps as well. Sanji nods mutely and follows her, Luffy’s pain still weighing heavily on his mind.

 

“We’ll get someone to eat on the way home, I think you and I could use a drink after watching that.” Shakky offers with a smile and that gets Sanji to laugh as he follows her. He’s never tracked anyone down for food before, his food has always come to him and then sometimes fucked him afterwards. It’ll be novel to have to find someone for a change, even if he’s not going to get laid in the process.

 

“I haven’t actually eaten since I’ve been here.” Sanji says, looking over his shoulder as they skirt the edge of the crowd, for bounty hunters, another sign of Rayleigh and to see if they’ve turned the screens back on. There’s no sign of any of those.

 

“Except for those people at the auction house.” Shakky says with a raised eyebrow. Sanji just mumbles in embarrassment at that. He doesn’t even really remember what happened, he’d leapt to defend Nami, Zoro and Hatchan from that raised gun and then… then the next thing he knew Zoro was talking him down from a circle of dead people.

 

“I’m going to teach you how to eat a little more discreetly. Follow me.” She says and leads him a little further away from the crowd.

 

Sanji follows her and they end up at the end of a row of buildings and lean against the back of them. There’s not a lot of foot traffic out here, but people are still dispersing from the square so the odd person goes by now and then.

 

“The first thing that you have to do,” Shakky says quietly whilst looking around the corner, “is to pick someone.”

 

“Zoro volunteered himself, I’ve never… caught someone for food.” Sanji admits with some discomfort. He’s not sure how he feels about drinking from an unwilling person. He hopes it won’t get awkward with his new association of food and sex but he supposes that’s perhaps the only benefit of no longer getting hard, no awkward hard ons. The worry about attacking someone and feeding off of them should at least distract him from thinking of Luffy.

 

“Well, you’re going to be out of people signing up to feed you, so you need to help yourself. Pick someone who looks healthy, between the two of us the person is going to lose a reasonably substantial amount of blood so you don’t want them to pass out or get sick from it.” Shakky informs him.

 

Sanji nods and peers at the few people milling towards the end of the line of buildings. Beyond them there’s a bridge leading off to other groves, so whilst the area is quiet there’s slow but reliable traffic. Coming towards them is a short haired brunette guy, he’s distracted as he walks by reading the newspaper as he goes, Sanji hopes it’s not the one with the damn article about screaming fog in. The guy is a bit short, a little bit chubby but his rosy cheeks make him look healthy enough. Sanji thinks that his perceptions of someone being out of shape may have been altered somewhat by being around his incredibly athletic crew. Even his shapely Nami had visibly defined abs if she stretches right or is a little dehydrated. Usopp is skinny but it’s a lithe, wiry kind of muscle and he certainly is fast on his feet. The only member of their crew who has muscles that aren’t obvious is Chopper and that was down to the fur. The other exception is Brook but, well, he doesn’t have any actual muscles or tendons of any kind.

 

“That guy.” Sanji suggests, pointing him out.

 

“Good choice, let him get closer.” Shakky nods and backs them both out of view so that they are completely obscured by the building. When the guy goes past they’ll see him but he won’t see them.

 

“Isn’t he going to… yell or something? I know that there aren’t many people around but he’s still going to notice what we’re doing and if he makes a fuss so will everyone else.” Sanji questions.

 

“You leave the last bit to me. As for hurting him when you bite him, if you sincerely don’t wish for it to hurt then you can make it so that it doesn’t hurt for your donor. In addition to that you can focus on an emotion and it transfers through your saliva into-” Shakky starts to explain.

 

“No, I know that.” Sanji says with a shake of his head and Shakky’s eyes widen in surprise.

 

“I could influence how Zoro felt and he could do it to me. It was nice… and he said it never hurt either.” Sanji explains, carefully leaving out about making it hurt a little because Zoro got a kick out of it. Shakky doesn’t need to know that much about him and Zoro. She looks a little impressed but she doesn’t say anything else because Sanji’s chosen guy walks past them.

 

Shakky glances behind him and then holds up her hand and points to him. She holds up three fingers and counts down. 3, 2, 1. On zero they both lunge for him and drag him back against the wall with them and Shakky’s hand clasped over his mouth. Shakky bites in first and the guy’s struggling slows. Sanji follows, picking the top of the guy’s arm to go for since he already had a tight grip on there.

 

Calm he thinks, forcing the feeling as much as he can. The guy struggles a little less, but he’s still trying to get away, he just seems drunk and sleepy about it. Sanji can see his head turning to look at him, his eyes hazy but still aware of what’s happening.

 

Shit, does this mean that he’s going to know that Sanji did this and confirm more of the rumours about him? He shoves the thoughts to the side, trusting whatever plan Shakky has and focuses on eating. The guy tastes like newspaper ink, home cooked chicken and white wine. A fellow cook perhaps. He lets the guy’s blood fill his stomach and Sanji can feel the life or energy or whatever it is in blood that he needs flow into his system.

 

He’s just starting to feel full when he feels Shakky pull her teeth out of him and hears the soft click sound of her teeth resetting themselves in her mouth. He does the same, licking the guy closed and sending another wave of calm at him. Shakky glances his way before spinning the guy around to face her and tilting his jaw to look at her, she’s slightly taller than him so he looks up at her ever so slightly.

 

“Wh-what was-” The guy mumbles drunkenly.

 

“Nothing happened. You were walking home and lost track of time, you were distracted and disturbed by the broadcast earlier. Go.” Shakky says and her voice sounds strange to Sanji. It’s slightly distorted and almost echoing, it feels a little like he’s hearing it inside his head rather than just going through his ears.

 

Shakky lets the man go, steps out of his way and gently shoves him back into the main area of the path. The guy stumbles a little and lingers for a second or two, then he shakes his head and looks around.

 

“I lost my newspaper.” He mumbles to himself, patting himself down. He looks around and Sanji realises in horror that his newspaper is at Shakky’s feet. His mentor bends down and scoops it up just as the guy turns around and sees them. Sanji freezes in fear, the guy’s going to notice and-

 

“You dropped this.” Shakky says, holding it out to him with a polite smile.

 

“Oh, thank you. I’m so distracted and disturbed by that broadcast that I keep losing track of what’s going on. Sorry, have a good day.” he says with a nod and a wave of his newspaper. He wanders off a little unsteadily and Sanji stares at him in disbelief. That wording can’t have been a coincidence.

 

“Is this… is this why no one has come into the bar looking for me? Have you been doing this to anyone who spotted me there?” Sanji asks as the thought dawns on him. Considering how much people have chased him outside the bar it’d seemed odd that no one had put two and two together and thought to catch him there.

 

“You can look out for yourself outside of my bar, but I’m not having stupid hunters and pirates trying to trash my bar in an attempt to get you.” Shakky says flatly and Sanji nods absently.

 

“How does it work?” Sanji asks curiously.

 

“I don’t know how exactly, and it’s going to be hard to teach, it’s been so long since I learnt it. Either way you can completely erase or rewrite a person’s short term memory, about thirty seconds. Anything beyond that is harder and they might remember, but with the right suggestions you can make it pretty unlikely that they will. Particularly self aware people will remember you trying to alter their long term memory, even if it’s just the most recent few minutes of their lives.” Shakky explains academically.

 

Sanji runs his tongue over his teeth absently and gets another taste of that newspaper ink, home cooked chicken and white wine taste that man had. His pace slows down, enough that Shakky stops and looks back at him over the distance that’s built up between them.

 

“I’ll uh- I’ll see you back at the bar.” Sanji says with a forced smile that he doesn’t really feel. Shakky nods and leaves with the feminine sway of her hips that Sanji’s gotten used to seeing.

 

Sanji deliberately breathes out, puffing his cheeks out at as he does it like he could blow his stress away on the breeze. He sees a bubble rise out of the ground and leaps for it, standing on it as it floats skywards. He stands there until he reaches the first high up branch of the mangrove and jumps off of his bubble to it. He’s high up enough that no one could probably see him, even if they did glance up. He settles himself on the branch, swinging one leg on either side and leaning back against the striped trunk.

 

He runs his tongue over his teeth again and tastes the man he just drank from. He doesn’t want that taste in his mouth, he wants afternoon sunshine, steel and ZORO. He misses the fucking man, he misses all his nakama but now, having someone else’s blood in his system, he misses Zoro like a drowning man misses air.

 

“Get back here you dumb marimo bastard. Where the hell even are you?” Sanji says without venom to the floating bubbles around him.

 

He pulls one leg up onto the branch and wraps an arm around it. He looks around and realises that from where he is he can’t even pinpoint which direction the idiot flew off into. It doesn’t matter though, he doesn’t know what islands are in any direction from here with the Grand Line having the confusing geography that it does. Even if he knew which way Zoro went it’s not as if he could swim that way and track him down by scent, not with three days flying over water and not touching anything. It doesn’t stop every bit of him wishing that he could though.

 

“I miss you.” He admits softly to the empty air. He misses the taste of Zoro sure, the bright life glow of Zoro’s blood in his system powering him like the sun does to a tree but it’s more than that. He misses the hum of Zoro’s emotions in his mind, the sounds of his moving about the ship, he misses kissing him and touching his body. It’s not just touching him in a sexual way that he misses, he misses fighting with him but also bumping into each other in the close quarters of the kitchen when it’s Zoro’s turn to help him do dish duty. He just misses him deep down in his still heart.

 

“Come back as soon as you can.” He pleads softly.

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

On day thirty seven the newspaper arrives and Sanji stares at the picture of Luffy and the drawn on message on his arm. 

3D is crossed out with a large X and instead is written 2Y.

He kicks one of the chairs in the bar into splinters. 

It’s going to be two years. Two years until he sees his nakama again and two years without Zoro. Two years as a dead man without his friends, stuck on an fucking mangrove that isn’t even an island with people out to kill him and right in the backyard of the marines and TWO FUCKING YEARS. 

Standing in the remains of the shattered furniture he dials back his feral growl. He’s going to get stronger for his nakama, he has to. He will. But at least right now he’s not strong enough to pretend like one little number and one little letter aren’t enough to break his heart.

Two years.


	17. Chapter 17

“All I’m saying,” Sanji says as he follows Shakky around the bar with his nose buried in a book, “is that in this book at least vampires can walk on walls and ceilings.”

 

“We can’t do that.” Shakky groans at him and wipes down the surface of the bar. Sanji hops up on a barstool and reads a little more.

 

“But look, it’s right here.” He says, pointing it out and turning it around to her.

 

“And I’ve told you that vampire books are written by humans, it’s just a fairy tale. Just because it’s in a book doesn’t mean that you can do it.” she says firmly.

 

“True, but vampires came before vampire fiction so it’s got to be based in truth, right?” he reasons, flicking through the pages for more potential powers.

 

“They make things up. You don’t burn up in sunlight do you?” Shakky says and throws her cloth into the sink behind the bar.

 

“Hah, that’s not what those bounty hunters think.” Sanji grins and folds his book back into his jacket. Even thinking about it now makes him want to laugh.

 

“That’s not what I taught you how to turn into that for. Though it was creative, I’ll give you that.” She laughs softly.

 

“You mean running away from them into a sunny clearing, screaming ‘Oh god the sun! IT BURNSSSS’ and then turning into smoke?” Sanji says, doing a realistic rendition of his acting for her.

 

“I wish I’d seen it.” She snickers and opens a tin of wood polish.

 

“Their faces were amazing and it got them off my tail for at least a month. If I see another chance to do it when you’re nearby I will.” He vows.

 

“I think that I should at least try the walking on walls and ceilings thing though.” He says thoughtfully as he flips a chair.

 

“I’ll take whatever furniture damage you cause doing that out of your pay.” She warns him.

 

“But you don’t pay me at all.” Sanji points out, looking around the table at her.

 

“Not with all the furniture you’ve broken.” She reprimands him in that tone that Sanji has started to notice generally means that she’s screwing with him.

 

“I would ask how much a chair could possibly cost that I’d owe you that much, but I know what the sign above the door says.”

 

“He can be taught.” Shakky comments wryly and Sanji rolls his eyes.

 

“Back on topic though, you’re supposed to be practicing a better way to get away from threats than turning into smoke and fog. That trick only works for evasion, you can’t move around like that unless the breeze hits you and then you have no control. You need a way to escape!” Shakky scolds him.

 

“But I can’t work out how to split myself like that.” Sanji complains and flips another chair onto the table. Clearing up the bar together at the end of the night, or rather the small hours of the morning, has become a ritual of sorts for them. After that they usually train together outside, away from prying eyes who might realise what they really are.

 

Shakky turns and grins maliciously at him, one hand on her hip. She walks a little closer to him with a shimmy that Sanji recognises as dangerous. It’s the walk that she does on the way to pirates who are being too rowdy and need to have their heads smacked together, it’s a ‘don’t mind me, i’m no threat’ walk and suddenly turns into terrible things.

 

“Do you need me to demonstrate again, Sanji?” She asks with a purr, right into his ear.

 

“NO! Dear God no please don’t!” Sanji shrieks, backing up and pointing the chair in his hand at her like a lion tamer, not that it would do any good for what she’s threatening to do.

 

“Either you do it or I do.” She says, her mouth curling into a catlike smile.

 

Sanji panics and get away get away get AWAY runs through him like lightning and he leaps into the air, desperate to escape on the air and freedom and-

 

He flaps like crazy and bounces off of the wall before coming to a rest on one of the wooden beams high up in the roof. He tilts his head to look at her through one anxious eye and scuttles a few steps to the side to get a little further away from her.

 

“Well, that was quicker than before but there’s still only one of you.” She comments in a lazy carefree tone as she looks up at him. Sanji scowls down at her in displeasure. He’s trying goddamnit but it’s not easy at all! Just because she’s older and has so much more experience than him doesn’t mean that she can expect him to get all of this right away! Even though it’s been almost exactly two years it’s still hard. She only started teaching him this trick four months ago and he only managed to crack the first stages of it four weeks ago.

 

“What? Nothing to say?” She smiles up at him.

 

“Caw.” Sanji responds down to her.

 

“I’d understand you more if you were human little birdie.” Shakky teases and Sanji glares at her and fluffs his black feathers in irritation. Turning into a bird isn’t as easy for a vampire as it is a zoan fruit user and he is literally just a bird, no cool powers or attacks or anything, it’s just a means of escape. Still, shifting the form of his whole body is hard, turning arms to wings and feet into talons, it’s not easy. Thankfully his system doesn’t allow him to get stuck halfway through though, which is a small mercy, he either changes or he doesn’t. Panic and a need to escape is the kind of feeling that he needs to focus on in order to change, but changing back has no easy feeling that he’s cracked yet. He usually just has to sit around as a raven for a while before he can figure out how to change back.

 

Evidently Shakky forcing him to change repeatedly is her way of ‘teaching’ him. Her whole teaching method has been like that, sink or swim and absolutely no hand holding. It’s much the same teaching style as Zeff and in all honesty he doesn’t know if he’d learn with anything different.

 

He shakes his little avian head and tries to concentrate. Human form, arms, legs, hands and a normal body. Breathe. Focus.

 

Goddamn his wing itches. He floofs his feathers and then unfloofs them, settling his feathers down smoothly.

 

Long legs, blond hair, the smell of cigarettes and for fuck’s sake his WING!

 

Sanji squawks in quiet indignity and unfurls his black wing, finding the offending feather with his beak and scraping at the skin, setting it back into alignment. Left a bit, right a bit? Stretch, flap, fold. No… still not quite there. This is why it’s so hard to go back to being humanoid again, an avian body is just so distracting, it’s so alien from his own that he’s bombarded with sensations that he doesn’t know how to ignore. Okay, maybe if he can just settle the smaller feathers under it then the damn thing will sit right.

 

The door bangs and Shakky mutters something. They’re closed though and it’s Shakky’s fault that he doesn’t have any hands with which to answer the door right now. It is completely her problem and not his. He flaps again and the itching is finally gone. He settles his wings back into place and tries to concentrate. There’s voices below and Sanji tries to ignore them, it’s not to do with him.

 

One voice shoves it’s way into his head though and he can’t ignore it.

 

“Am I the first one to return then?”

 

“Technically… yes.”

 

Sanji leaps in a flutter of wings and leaps from his beam to the next and peers down in wide eyed excitement. Green hair, swords, broad shoulders and oh that voice. ZORO! He’s back, he’s finally fucking BACK! Sanji squawks loudly and turns, opening his wide wings and beating them in the air, he soars back across the roof, turns his wing here and tilts his tail just so, darts under the beams and through the room towards Zoro.

 

He needs his body back! He needs to throw his arms around Zoro’s neck and scream in glee at him being back and finally real again!

 

“When did you get a bird? Augh, like I needed to see any more creepy creatures after where I’ve been.” Zoro’s voice rumbles through to him. He can’t see Zoro properly this close up, his eyes are meant for seeing from far away, this close everything is too blurry with motion and the range.

 

He flaps in a panic and a desperate plea to himself of arms and legs. Zoro is here and he can’t be a fucking bird! He feels himself falling towards the ground and in a flail of wings launches himself up a little more and scrambles for something to cling to.

 

“Agh! Fucking bird!”

 

There’s a flash of silver light and oh god sword MOVE MOVE! He pounds his wings frantically until hands close around him, cold and steady fingers around his rapidly beating little bird heart.

 

“Calm down little birdie. Breathe.” a woman’s voice whispers, breath ruffling feathers on his neck and no don’t touch get away. The bird part of his body’s brain is freaking out completely, it’s too indoors, too close and someone is holding him.

 

“Shh. Remember what I told you.” She… Shakky murmurs. Right, yes, Shakky. He needs to change back.

 

He focuses on the image of himself in his mind, and pictures throwing himself at Zoro, arms around his neck and his chest to Zoro’s chest in the tightest hug that the man can stand because it’s been so LONG.

 

“There we go.” She says with a smile in her voice and her hands launch him into the air but his feet hit the ground in black dress shoes before he can fall, arms coming out to find his balance.

 

“Sanji?!” Zoro’s surprised voice exclaims. Sanji looks over with wide eyes still adjusting from avian black to his vampiric grey as Zoro suddenly comes back into focus again. He looks different but it’s Zoro!

 

He hurls himself at the other man, leaping and wrapping his arms around the other man’s shoulders and pressing his face into Zoro’s warm neck. He breathes in and is filled with steel, ocean salt and a feeling that Sanji can over ever describe as autumn, crisp leaves and cool breezes. All of it is immutably and perfectly Zoro and Sanji’s whole being feels more whole for just feeling it.

 

“How… did you eat a Zoan fruit when we were apart?” Zoro asks wide eyed as he pulls Sanji back, and that’s eye in the singular.

 

“What… what the hell happened to you?” Sanji yells a touch louder that is perhaps strictly needed. He reaches out and runs his fingertips over the scar on Zoro’s eye that goes from brow to cheekbone straight down.

 

“Can I fix it? It doesn’t look new but-” Sanji asks babbles, looking at it and hoping that he can. It’s not a vanity thing but if Zoro is hurt then of course he wants to fix him. Geez, he sounds like Chopper now, when did that happen?

 

“That wound looks old, what… six months? More?” Shakky says, looking at Zoro over Sanji’s shoulder.

 

“A year.” Zoro shrugs with his broad shoulders. Too long for Sanji to have healed him then.

 

Sanji steps back a little and really looks at him, Zoro is huge he’s taller than he was, frustratingly taller than Sanji in fact. He’s become broader all over and it looks like his fucking muscles have muscles. His jaw is more square than it was and his hair is longer and swept back, Zoro didn’t look like a teenager before, but now he really does look like a grown man.

 

“Yeah, I only have one eye but you were a bird and- hey… your teeth… are you human again?” Zoro asks in shock and catches Sanji under the chin and tilts his head back.

 

“You’re still kind of cold but..” Zoro frowns and one of his hands wanders to Sanji’s neck, where his pulse would have been.

 

“Nah, still dead.” Sanji answers and pulls back his lip in a simulated snarl that has his teeth sliding out and he feels how Zoro’s thumb moves to press against Sanji’s right fang as it slides out. It’s just a tiny nick of his skin really but suddenly his well trained system snaps right back to Zoro. Even though he’s been keeping himself fed for the last two years it’s never been like it was with Zoro, he doesn’t even think he ever drank the same person twice.

 

“Heyletmeshowyoutheship!” Sanji blurts out, grabs Zoro’s green robe thing and hauls him right out of the bar.

 

Sanji and Zoro don't even make it as far as the ship before Sanji shoves Zoro up against one of the mangrove tree trunks and kisses him, something he actually has to lean up to do now.

 

"I missed you so fucking much you muscled brained moron, I can't even-" Sanji pants as he barely manages to coordinate kissing Zoro and talking.

 

"What? Ran out of people to yell at when we were away?" Zoro snorts in amusement and the sensible bit of Sanji's brain kicks in and reminds him that they have been apart for two years and maybe Zoro had found someone better in that time. Someone who was, you know, alive. It wouldn't be a betrayal or anything, actually if Zoro had met someone while he was away he'd have known them longer than he had known Sanji. It's not beyond belief that Zoro might have moved on, but Sanji hadn't thought to question that, had he?

 

Sanji pulls back a little and looks at him, trying to keep his expression under control and to get a read on Zoro. It's clearly been too long since he was last near Zoro, or maybe just too long since he last fed off of him because Sanji is getting absolutely zero emotional read off of him. The complete emotional silence outside of Sanji's head had been deafening when they were first separated but it'd been easy to get past when it was just other people and not Zoro. Heck, even around his own nakama without Zoro there he didn't get anything. But to be here in front of Zoro now and feel nothing from him is all kinds of wrong.

 

Zoro just laughs softly and pokes Sanji in the chest.

 

"You're just the same as you were before." Zoro says with a smirk.

 

"Well, yeah, I'm dead. I don't age, unlike you. You look completely different." Sanji mutters, looking off to the side. He feels like a fucking kid around Zoro like this and though the height difference isn't that much the fact that it's there at all is just another reminder that Sanji is, and forever will be, different.

 

"I didn't mean how you look, I mean you're acting just like how you did two years ago." Zoro chuckles and Sanji feels like someone just threw a bucket of ice water at him. Is Zoro laughing at him for his assumption? Has Zoro really moved on that much that-

 

"Still overthinking shit that you don't need to think about. Dumbass." Zoro snorts and pulls Sanji back in by his shirt. Sanji's eyes widen for a second, was Zoro just screwing with him there?!

 

"You ASSHOLE! You- I thought that you meant- AUGH!" Sanji yells and shoves at Zoro. It doesn't get him away from Zoro though, evidently those muscles aren't just for show. Zoro's just laughing against Sanji's skin, evidently he'd missed jerking Sanji around in their time apart and is making up for it in spades now.

 

Sanji shoves himself backwards in Zoro's arms and with barely a thought he disintegrates into fog and rolls backwards with the small bit of momentum he had. Shakky is right, he can't really escape as a vapour like that, but it's still useful. He reforms out of Zoro's clutches and glares at him.

 

"That's new too. So that and the bird thing...?" Zoro questions with a tilt of his head.

 

"Vampire stuff, I have been training you know." He says with a snippy and unimpressed tone of voice.

 

"Huh." Zoro says and nods. It's not a question or a sign that he doesn't understand. But Zoro isn't like Usopp, Luffy and Chopper, he's not going to stand around with stars in his eyes going on about how cooooool something is. Zoro is impressed by effort and strength and Sanji knows that he's put in and achieved enough of both to have earned that, no matter how much he might screw with his own mind and self doubt that is something he's certain of.

 

"I thought I was the first one back as I'm early, but you got back before me from... where were you anyway? Who were you training with?" Zoro asks in open curiosity and Sanji decides to return the favour of fucking with Zoro's head.

 

"Oh, another vampire actually." He says easily, stuffing his hands in his pockets with a light smile, the very picture of innocence and sincerity.

 

"I've been staying with Shakky when I've been here." He adds misleadingly.

 

"I noticed that she didn't seem surprised by you being a bird and then suddenly having fangs." Zoro comments.

 

"Oh, she's pretty used to it." Sanji smiles.

 

"She always seemed pretty laid back, even though it feels like forever since we were here and met her." the other man says in a voice that for a moment dampens Sanji's enthusiasm for teasing Zoro like this. Only a little bit though.

 

"Oh yeah, she's been very good." He nods.

 

"So when did you get here?" Zoro questions.

 

"Two years ago." Sanji grins broadly, with fangs included for effect. Zoro's eyes, well, eye, opens comically widely.

 

"Don't tell me that I was the only one who got sent away? I thought for sure that Kuma intended to get everyone! You all made it out of the fight just fine and you've been... waiting for me?" Zoro gasps and now Sanji's feeling guilty.

 

"No, everyone got sent away but me. I've been here the whole time." Sanji admits, his game not seeming so fun now. Zoro frowns, but not at Sanji personally.

 

"You got away then?" he asks.

 

"Not as such. After Kuma popped you away to... wherever, I pretty much lost it. It was dumb of me but I just flung myself at him and tried to rip him apart. Too bad he's mostly metal and about three times as tall as me. He elbowed me off of him and I hit a tree awkwardly and got staked through the heart." Sanji explains unhappily.

 

"I thought that kind of thing would have killed you." Zoro breathes in horror and Sanji feels slightly warmed by the idea that Zoro hadn't really been worried for him. It's not callousness, it's faith. Zoro was probably worried if he was okay or not, but whether he was still alive (so to speak) evidently hadn't crossed his mind.

 

"Yeah, instead I just got paralyzed, or something like it. I looked very convincingly dead, more than normal anyway. So Kuma and the others just left me alone, so I got to watch the same happen to everyone without being able to move or do anything. Rayleigh got me down and ran off with me, lying about burying me or some shit, I'm not sure the marines buy that I'm dead, they've not taken back my poster and there's enough people on the island looking for me but- yeah." Sanji finishes with a sigh and scrubs at his face. It still stresses him out thinking about it.

 

"So, when the others get back I'm going to have to go through a lot of explanations to them about how I'm not dead." Sanji says gloomily.

 

There’s a long pause before Zoro speaks again.

 

“I thought there would have been a skull joke there, or have you grown out of them?” Zoro murmurs, evidently sensing that there’s something serious going on. Zoro always used to do this, he’d get that something was off and then poke it to see how bad it was. If things were really bad then Zoro would just know, but even so his tactlessness is reassuring in a familiar sort of way.

 

“You’d be dead wrong about that.” Sanji replies with no real mirth in his voice and folds his arms across his chest and kicks at a sticky patch of grass on the floor. Is he ever looking forward to getting to a real island where the grass isn’t sticky with goop.

 

“I guess I asked for that one.” Zoro says with a soft laugh that makes the corner of Sanji’s mouth twitch in a smile.

 

“You and Luffy are going to be the only people who don’t think that I died permanently two years ago. You because you didn’t see it and Luffy because I managed to come out of it a little just before he got popped away. I’m pretty sure that he saw it at least from how he reacted.” Sanji explains and forces the thought out of his head. The number of hours he’s spent on the roof of the bar staring up at the sky unblinkingly and going back and forth over whether his captain knows or he doesn’t is enough to drive anyone out of their mind and he’s not going to keep doing that to himself.

 

“Okay.” Zoro says, filling in the gap in the conversation in the most neutral way possible. Goddamnit, Zoro is almost never this careful with him! Has he changed or is Sanji just that obviously a wreck over this?

 

“I already put everyone through the whole watching me die and then ‘surprise I’m not really dead!’ thing once, and now I’m going to do it to them all over again.” He says, his mouth tasting bitter with anger.

 

“Well, you didn’t get a choice about them thinking that you were dead, not either time. Watching you die was…” Zoro trails off with an expression that tells Sanji full well that it still hurts Zoro even now and if anything that only makes Sanji’s guilt worse.

 

“That’s really fucking reassuring!” He snaps angrily and turns his back on Zoro. He doesn’t need Zoro making him feel worse, he’s got that covered all on his own thank you very much.

 

“Quit interrupting, dartboard face!” Zoro argues back and shoves Sanji in the shoulder.

 

“Watching you die was the one of the worst things ever, and part of me is glad that I got to miss out on round two of that.” Zoro admits in a guilty tone. Zoro doesn’t often admit selfish things like that. Though he has every right to not want to have witnessed something like that it doesn’t change the fact that the rest of their nakama did.

 

“But getting you back was one of the best things. Believe me, they’re going to be happy to know that they were wrong.” Zoro assures him. Sanji knows that his nakama will be glad, but he doesn’t know if seeing him again is going to hurt them too. If they’ve grieved for him and moved on then seeing him again, even though they will be pleased to have him back, will open up that wound again. Sanji shakes his head, no good can come of thinking like this and if Zoro has to keep hand holding and reassuring him of that then he might just have to slap himself in the face to snap himself out of it.

 

“This wasn’t even what I dragged you out for, let me show you the ship.” Sanji says and takes off in the right direction without looking back to see if Zoro is following him. To his pleasure the moron doesn’t get lost and manages to follow him, Sanji can tell that much from the sound of his boots.

 

The two of them walk in silence and maybe that should be odd after two years apart, they should probably be excitedly talking about everything and catching up. Neither of them are normal people though. In a way having a comfortable silence with Zoro is just like old times, it’s familiar and comfortable. Even before Sanji died most of their silences were comfortable, they could go long stretches near each other and say nothing and have it be nice. If one of them was angry with the other then it was a sure bet that it wouldn’t be silent anger. In this way, not talking to Zoro is comforting and familiar, like coming home. Speaking of coming home, the ship comes into view over the hill of the grove and Sanji hears Zoro sigh in relief.

 

“Rayleigh coated it then.” Zoro notes as they walk towards the ship. It’s covered in the shiny film of the bubble coating and though Sanji has walked through it several times it still feels weird.

 

“Yeah, he did it more or less right away. Oh God, Duval’s here.” Sanji groans and smacks his forehead, ducking back out of sight.

 

“Why is he here?” Zoro asks, squinting down at the morons with a look on his face as if he can’t quite work them out.

 

“They figure they owe me for… I don’t know, fixing Duval’s face or that botched shitty rescue. Either way the Flying Rosy Fish Gang Group whatever the hell they’re calling themselves this week agreed to guard the ship for us and they’ve been here ever since. They always have a few guys there but it would have to be Duval right when I want to go through wouldn’t it.” Sanji hisses angrily, pressing himself to a tree trunk.

 

“Why did they have the guard the Sunny, why weren’t you doing it?” Zoro asks, turning to look at Sanji with disapproval.

 

“Don’t give me that look you green cyclops. For one I was training and two I’m a wanted man here. Hanging out at the Sunny is a good way to get caught or get the ship damaged and I don’t intend to do either.” Sanji responds angrily.

 

“Oh, yeah,” Zoro nods thoughtfully, “I forgot that the marines were so close.”

 

“Dumbass, how could you forget a thing like that? Anyway, you’re wrong. They moved camp, hence why this place has gone to shit in two years. No, I’ve got a price on my head and not with the marines, and it’s higher than yours too.” Sanji drawls and flicks the current auction house leaflet at Zoro. He kicked a bounty hunter in the face last week in front of his buddies so his asking price gone up a little more again.

 

Zoro looks at it with a frown, flicking through the pages a little but returning to the one dedicated to Sanji for the last two years.

 

“It’s not the marines, doesn’t count.” Zoro says flatly, making Sanji’s hackles rise in annoyance. It so obviously counts!

 

“Have you been holding onto this to spite me with it?” Zoro asks with a predatory grin, holding the booklet up and leaning into Sanji’s space. Sanji wants to snap out and deny it but it is true and Zoro fucking knows it too.

 

“I’m gonna turn into a raven again and peck your other eye out.” Sanji threatens. He pauses and looks down the hill at Duval as an idea occurs to him.

 

“Actually that’s not a bad idea. Carry me down there, you owe me.” He says thoughtfully.

 

“For WHAT?!” Zoro demands but Sanji can’t answer because he’s suddenly a lot smaller and lacking in human vocal chords. He takes off from the floor with a flap of wide wings and lands on Zoro’s shoulder. He probably shouldn’t do this twice in one night, it’ll make him hungry using up so much juice in such a short amount of time, new things take more out of him than tricks that he’s mastered. Still… it’s not like he’s short of a willing food source anymore is it?

 

Zoro glares at him but Sanji isn’t moving. This staredown can go on for a while but Sanji actually really wants to show him. He tilts his head towards the ship and with an irritated sigh Zoro walks on. Zoro has a short and boring conversation with Duval when he reaches the ship, the shrill tones of Duval grating even on Sanji’s avian ears. To distract himself he leans over and nudges Zoro’s earrings with his beak. They chime quite pleasantly and he does it again. The avian part of his brain is tempted to take them off of Zoro.

 

All of a sudden there’s a hand coming towards him and it’s not Zoro’s, he’d have felt the shift in posture from the man’s opposite arm moving. Sanji hops around on Zoro’s shoulder and fluffs up angrily, but the hand keeps coming closer.

 

“Is he tame?” Duval’s voice says and the hand reaches for Sanji’s back and wing. Sanji leaps out, and pecks the person’s wrist hard, digging right into the joint. Unfortunately he doesn’t let go in time to stop himself being yanked off of Zoro’s shoulder and along with the arm that he’s attacking. He flails, squawks, screeches and takes flight, deliberately kicking his taloned feet off of Duval’s face in the process. He gets fully airborne and circles around, glaring down at the man and at Zoro’s amused expression. He turns and settles gracefully back on Zoro’s shoulder again.

 

“No, he’s not.” Zoro answers deadpan and walks past the quietly cursing Duval.

 

He feels Zoro’s balance pitch as the squishiness of the coating throws him with it’s weirdness. Zoro squelches his way through the coating towards the hatch down to the men’s cabin and Sanji decides that he hates going through the coating enough as it is, it always makes his skin feel weird, so he sure as shit isn’t doing it in feathers. He leans forward and grabs the neck of the front of the weird green robe that Zoro is wearing and drops down, twisting so that he hangs from it. He gets it talons into the inside of the fabric and ducks inside, shifting himself around until he’s nestled against Zoro’s warm waist with his feet tucked into Zoro’s haramaki and the fabric of Zoro’s robe covering him.

 

“What the fuck are you doing in there?” Zoro demands, peering into his clothes to look at Sanji with utter bewilderment. Sanji stares back up at him for a few long moments before he gets bored and pecks Zoro for him to get a move on already.

 

“Alright alright.” Zoro grumbles and leans through the coating for a few seconds before it gives and Zoro stumbles inside.

 

Sanji scrabbles his way out of Zoro’s clothes and flutters to the floor of the men’s bunkroom. Right, humanoid again. He can do this. He closes his eyes and breathes, trying to focus. A few long seconds pass and he hears Zoro get a little bit closer. Sanji clamps down on his avian instinctive dislike of being too close to something big whilst on the floor. He focuses again, he’s got this, he knows he has.

 

“What, are you stuck or something? Or just shy?” Zoro snickers at him. Sanji opens his eyes and glares up at the hulking figure of Zoro above him. He hops and tries to raise one foot up to flip Zoro off but he doesn’t have enough toes to do it right. Suddenly he’s standing up again before Zoro with both middle fingers raised in his face.

 

“Fuck you.” Sanji says succinctly and turns on his heel. That’s something to note down, he always seems to need a pressing reason to turn back, a single thought to focus on and his body obeys his will. Evidently the urge to flip Zoro the bird actually makes him not a bird. He’ll have to use that in future, it’s not like the desire to insult Zoro is ever far from his mind, he ought to be able to bring that feeling up when he needs it.

 

“And here I was trying to do something nice for you.” Sanji huffs and turns on his heel.

 

“Surprising.” Zoro remarks flatly. Sanji flips him off again absently as he heads to his locker.

 

“I was keeping this here so that it’d be safe. I take it you know about Ace, if you got Luffy’s message you would, right?” Sanji asks, glancing at him.

 

“Yeah, I know.” the other man replies, his voice heavy and Sanji knows the man well enough to be able to tell when Zoro is concerned. He knows that they all must be for Luffy.

 

“Did you see it on screen? They broadcast that fucking thing like some morbid entertainment, and I’m dead, I know morbid.” Sanji remarks, slightly pleased at his wit and catching Zoro’s annoyed face in the mirror on the door of his locker. Yep, it looks like skull jokes still piss the moron off, all the more reason to keep making them.

 

“No, I didn’t see it. I’m not sure I would have wanted to.” the swordsman answers flatly.

 

“Well, you’ll want to see this bit. I got some of the tape that they made, apparently they hard recorded the whole thing and I managed to bludgeon enough people to get a cut up copy of the bits that you’ll want to see. Ah, here it is.” Sanji exclaims, pulling the tape from it’s hiding place and holding it up. Zoro is scowling at him now, but that’s nothing new.

 

“Why would I want to see that? It’s bad enough what Luffy had to go through, why would I want to watch it over and over?” Zoro demands of him.

 

“Like I said, it’s a cut version. I only have the bits here that you’ll want. Take it.” Sanji says, pressing it into Zoro’s hands.

 

“Look,” Sanji sighs, keeping his hands in Zoro’s for a moment.

 

“All of them were there, including Mihawk. I know your dream just as well as I know mine, and it’s not like you’re going to get a lot of chances to watch him fight. The last time you fought you were a little busy actually fighting him to study him much, but with this you can watch his technique without being involved. It’s not like you’re going to get a lot of opportunities for that, so I thought it would help.” He explains and steps back.

 

This is the part that he wasn’t sure of. Sanji clings to any chance to get closer to his dream, the book that still in Nami’s map room is proof of that. Zoro’s dream is different though and if Zoro wants to train solo without studying Mihawk’s technique as proof that his method is best then that would but understandable, but at least this way Zoro has a choice.

 

Zoro looks like he doesn’t know what to say, but he eventually looks up at Sanji with something approaching gratitude on his face.

 

“Thank you.” He says simply and a warm feeling rushes through Sanji’s chest.

 

Zoro unlatches his own locker, a little stiff from disuse and puts Sanji’s tape inside.

 

“So, was that the real reason you wanted me in here?” Zoro asks. Sanji sense that Zoro would be watching him out of the corner of his eye if that one was still open. He wants to know what happened, and maybe eviscerate whoever did it, but he supposes that if Zoro wants him to know then he’ll tell him. Sanji thinks on Zoro’s question and takes in the broad stretch of his shoulders, the wider chest and the height difference. Zoro has maybe two or two and a half inches in height on him now, but with the rest of his figure change it seems an awful lot. Sanji and Zoro have been competing at every single thing for so long that Sanji would have anticipated feeling discomfort at Zoro literally having the upper hand on him like this, but he doesn’t feel that at all.

 

“Why,” He purrs and leans on Zoro’s shoulder as he wraps his arms around the man’s neck, “are you insinuating that I had ulterior motives?”

 

“Yeah, you’re a real saint blondie.” Zoro snorts and shifts slightly, tugging Sanji in front of him and pressing him up close to the lockers and grinning down smugly at him. Zoro clearly is enjoying the height difference.

 

“Enjoying the view from up there? Think that you could look a little more smug about it, or is that the only impressive thing you did in the last two years and it’s all you’ve got to enjoy?” Sanji needles him.

 

“Nah, but you have to appreciate the little things in life.” Zoro shoots back and Sanji actually blinks at him in shock for a second because Zoro’s not usually quite that witty. He wonders if whoever he spent two years dealing with sharpened his abilities for good comebacks. Still, he can’t show that kind of thing.

 

“Don’t piss off the guy in snapping range of your arteries, idiot.” Sanji warns.

 

Zoro just tilts his head to the side and smiles real slow, as if he’s got all of the time in the world. Sanji’s eyes run over the curve of Zoro’s neck, the muscles that are thicker and stronger than they were before and all of his memories of biting into him there.

 

“I’m okay with that.” Zoro says quietly and leans in a little closer.

 

Sanji doesn’t question him, if he does Zoro will tell him that he’s over thinking again, and in truth Sanji knows that he’d be right. Instead he just leans in, his mouth going to the same join between neck and shoulder that was always their most frequent place. Sure he’d bitten Zoro elsewhere before and other places worked just as well, but for their first time back it would probably be good to keep things simple.

 

He licks his lips nervously and hovers just above Zoro’s skin with his breath ghosting across the man’s flesh, a habit that he’d finally relearnt, he waits for a moment and when Zoro doesn’t stop him he considers that a yes. His true teeth slide out into place and he lets them scrape across Zoro’s skin for a second before biting into Zoro.

 

It feels like waking up in the Baratie with Zeff’s peg leg thumping around in the distance and a bunch of surly cooks fighting for the bathroom. It feels like being curled up in his hammock listening to Luffy and Usopp snore and the deep slow breathing of Zoro offset by the animal snuffling of Chopper. It feels like being where he belongs and even though all is not right with the world it’s a hell of a lot better now.

 

He feels an ache deep in his chest, or rather it’s muted enough that he knows it’s a reflection of what Zoro has. It’s an ache of affection and the same homesickness that Sanji has been going through finally fading. He can feel viscerally how Zoro has missed him. He knows that they’re never really going to talk about it, they’re not going to sit up at night tearfully discussing how much it hurt to be apart, that’s not how they are. Besides, a conversation with words couldn’t do this justice. He doesn’t even have to think to echo Zoro’s feelings back, to send him a chemical message of ‘I missed you too, but we’re here now’.

 

One hand comes into Zoro’s longer hair and slides through it so that Sanji’s hand is almost cradling him close whilst the other slides into the warm gap between Zoro’s clothes and his side, right where he had been as a bird. Zoro’s own hands move too, instead of caging him in Zoro shifts his forward weight to his knee against the locker and presses one hand into Sanji’s hip and wraps the other behind Sanji’s back, pulling him closer like Sanji might pull away. Sanji has no intention of doing that at all.

 

Maybe Zoro’s original accusation of him is right, maybe he is an undead food snob but no one that he’s ever tasted tastes as good as Zoro does. He knows that it’s more than just the blood that he needs, it’s life or something like it, though Shakky has assured him that he’s not actually draining his target’s life. In fact people who are fed on long term tend to get some advantages. In the same way that he was able to hear Zoro and track him easily apparently if they did this long enough Zoro could get a seriously extended lifespan.

 

If it’s not Zoro’s life then maybe what he’s having to connect himself to is Zoro’s essence, not quite his soul but perhaps all of the bits that make up Zoro as a person. He’s had some people who have tasted bad to him and a few who have been nice and most who were just unremarkable, none of them felt right like Zoro does. Perhaps that means that who Zoro is as a person fits him completely, perhaps that’s why Zoro likes it so much too, he knows that Zoro gets to feel the emotional side of this exchange even though the taste is missing from him. So perhaps he feels the same symmetrical fit that Sanji feels, the same two halves of a whole that-

 

Sanji cuts off the romantic half of his brain. He’s getting ahead of himself.

 

He pulls back and licks Zoro’s cut shut with a wish for it to heal fast, clean and not to hurt. It’s simple and quick, it’s what he’s used on everyone else and it’s all that he can summon into his head without pulling up things that he shouldn’t be thinking whilst Zoro has some feedback into what’s going on in his mind.

 

“Why’d you stop?” Zoro asks against Sanji’s skin, taking the hand from Sanji’s hip and catching the corner of his jaw with it, his fingers going to Sanji’s hair and his thumb along Sanji’s jawline. Sanji is vaguely paranoid that Zoro still felt what he was feeling and thinking for him anyway but he ignore that.

 

Sanji doesn’t answer, Zoro knows him well enough to tell when he’s talking bullshit even with their two years apart. Instead he shifts and kisses Zoro instead, hoping to distract him. Thankfully whilst Zoro is intent as always on finding out anything that Sanji is trying to keep from him, part of their long running game of anything you can do I can do better, he is equally interested in the possibility of kissing Sanji senseless. He wonders if Zoro got a hint of how he was feeling back through their connection or whether Zoro is just that perceptive. Either is possible knowing the other man.

 

"I didn't think I'd ever be glad for our nakama not being here... but how many chances are we going to get for this kind of thing in here?" Sanji asks a little breathlessly. The thing with learning to breathe automatically again is that things that would usually interrupt his breathing or alter it, such as getting excited like this, interfere with it again and give more emotional tells than he would like. Still, it's not as if his enthusiasm is something that he wants to keep from Zoro, or that there would be any point in trying. The way that he's trying to get his hands on every bit of Zoro that he can is a give away enough on its own.

 

"That's true." Zoro hums in agreement and peels Sanji's shirt off of him, making Sanji have to take a break from kissing him.

 

Sanji has already got the top half of Zoro's robe off of him and for a second he feels a mite self-conscious. Zoro has aged and filled out, his body becoming more honed and impossibly more attractive, while Sanji on the other hand is the same as before. His skinnier frame has never bothered him much in comparison to Zoro, he's built for different things after all, but now he feels so much smaller than him and his cold skin doesn't seem too appealing. He shoves it down with a flare of pride, he's not going to think that about himself, it's just two years and whilst Zoro might have bulked up, Sanji has changed too, just in more subtle ways and he's going to show him just how much. Furthermore he's smarter than Zoro is at times like this, when Zoro's mind is fogged with hormones from lust Sanji's remains clear and able to plot.

 

"Just so you know," He says, leaning into Zoro and speaking against the underside of his jaw as he kisses him there, feeling the pulse under it as he does so.

 

"The lube is gone." He finishes.

 

"What? But..." Zoro frowns unhappily.

 

"Yeah, it's been two years and some idiot, not naming any names here, left the cap off of the damn thing in the storeroom. By the time I got down there to give away our long term stores it had long since expired and dried up." Sanji grumbles.

 

"Shit." Zoro says unhappily.

 

Sanji grins, he has other plans. He slides his hands down Zoro's sides and along the front of his black trousers, finding the button and zip. They're not the same ones that Zoro had before, even Zoro's hips have got wider with more muscle, but they're still the same style that he had before. Apparently looking like you got dressed in the dark with the first thing you found was a look that Zoro wasn't willing to give up. Still, the good thing about Zoro's clothes being against Sanji's fashion taste is that it always makes him more eager to get them off of him.

 

He opens the button and slides his right hand down Zoro's front and follows the trail of coarse green hair there. He's sapped enough warmth into himself from Zoro's chest and sides to know that his hand won't be cold when he touches Zoro and so he's unsurprised when his warm hand finds Zoro hard for him. He grins, perfect.

 

With his other hand he tugs at the red sash on Zoro's waist and shoves it and Zoro's new robe to the floor.

 

"Take that ratty thing off too, I can't believe that you still have that." Sanji demands, pointing to the fucking green haramaki that Zoro still hasn't abandoned, despite altering the rest of his clothes. Regardless of how convenient a bird perch it makes when hiding in Zoro's clothes he's still not going to do anything sexual to the man when he's wearing just that.

 

As Zoro reluctantly peels off his green band, with much displeased muttering, Sanji slides Zoro's belt loose and carefully discards his swords on the ground. As much as Zoro’s swords are a part of him he'd rather not have them get in his way right now.

 

"Missed me?" He purrs and nicks Zoro's skin with a fang and chases it up with his tongue, yeah Zoro tastes pretty needy alright.

 

"Yeah." Zoro agrees, his hand on Sanji's hip and his thumb rubbing over Sanji's hipbone. His stupid nervous system still doesn't really register that kind of thing as pleasurable, but what apparently still gets Sanji going is watching just what it does for Zoro and clearly Zoro still very much likes getting his hands wherever he can.

 

"I can show you how much I've missed you." He hums and kisses Zoro again nice and slow, both of his hands coming up to Zoro's face and taking his time to really show that he's genuine about that.  

 

Still he doesn't want to be too sweet to Zoro here, the man might get the idea that he likes him or something. Of course he'd be completely right but even so. He gets himself back on track and decides to show Zoro that just because he can't see how Sanji has changed doesn't mean that he hasn't. Sanji doesn't really give Zoro much time to respond before using his supernatural speed and strength to grab Zoro by the waistband of his trousers towards him, forcing Zoro to brace his hands on either side of Sanji’s head, his hands and slamming him into the metal of the lockers with a ring. He holds Zoro tight there, one hand on his hip and Sanji keeps him in an iron grip before rippling his whole body up against Zoro’s, teasing him just so.  Sure Zoro is strong enough to have stopped him manhandling him like that and perhaps he might be as fast as Sanji now, but he doubts that one considering that he outmaneuvered Zoro after changing before their separation and has only got faster since. Either way he wasn't expecting it and surprised is just how he likes Zoro.

 

He keeps him pinned there as much as he can and watches the interested and excited reaction in Zoro's eyes, the way his human body reacts is just how Sanji's used to be, but by now it's been so long since Sanji's felt human it's almost novel to watch. He nips at Zoro's throat again with his fangs, not bothering to send any signals to stop it from hurting, and he both hears and feels the groan it drags out of Zoro, he's not grown out of his pain kink either then.

 

He drops to his knees without warning and divests Zoro of what little clothes he has left, leaving them in a puddle at his feet. He leans in and licks a stripe up Zoro's dick only for Zoro's hand to suddenly tangle in Sanji's hair and very pointedly keep him still.

 

"I thought," Zoro pants reluctantly, "that we agreed weren't going to let your teeth anywhere near there."

 

Sanji grins up at him, his fangs still on display. He runs his tongue over them for good measure and watches as Zoro's face becomes an amusing combination of 'oh yes' and 'oh no'.

 

"Did you forget about this though marimo?" Sanji asks, with a broad teeth showing smile and lets his fangs snap back, giving him a wholly human passing mouth. He runs tongue over his teeth again before leaning in and just letting his tongue touch Zoro again.

 

"Of course if you still don't want to..." He says innocently but from the way Zoro's hips twitch ever so slightly Sanji is pretty fucking sure that Zoro DOES want to. He's still going to make the man say it out loud though, both because he likes making Zoro weak just for him but also because it's no fun and not okay if Zoro doesn't want it. Sanji wants to get the upper hand here but if Zoro still doesn't trust his teeth to stay safe then that's his call and Sanji is more than happy to-

 

"Please." Zoro chokes out, his hand twitching in Sanji's hair like he wants to just drag Sanji's mouth onto him by himself.

 

"Since you asked so nicely." He says brightly and immediately obliges Zoro. Slow is for later, right now is for fucking with Zoro's mind. He demonstrates the fact that he is absolutely not human any more, he doesn't need any kind of gag reflex now so he can go as far down Zoro as he likes and as hard as he pleases. Better than that though is the way that he makes Zoro curse loudly in shock at his sudden start.

 

He moves like that for a bit, until Zoro is clearly wanting him to go faster, then Sanji decides to take things a little slower. Frustrating Zoro will never get boring, and what's the point of getting everything that you want the moment that you want it? He pulls back until Zoro isn't really in his mouth at all and it's his hand that he's got around Zoro.

 

A theory starts to emerge in the back of Sanji's mind as he watches with pleasure as Zoro's muscles tense in an effort to keep him still, he's barely been doing this to him long and the swordsman is falling apart so easily. Perhaps it's felt like a long time for both of them. Still, he has more interesting things on his mind. He's able to control how people feel when he's bit them, he can stop anything he does to Zoro from hurting, he can make people calm and placid when he bites them and he's made Zoro almost drunk on happiness before. Hell, when he and Zoro had sex the night before they were all separated they got stuck in a repeating loop of orgasmic bliss because he and Zoro kept echoing the same feeling back at each other. That's what his mouth does now. So the question is, can he do that without needing to go through Zoro's skin, something he certainly doesn't want to do here. Even if he didn't have the keen awareness of what Zoro's circulatory system is doing at the best of times he certainly knows where most of Zoro's blood flow is right now. So in theory the same should work.

 

Sanji focuses on how much he wants Zoro to feel great, how amazing it felt before when Zoro came for him and Sanji had his fangs in Zoro's neck. He wants Zoro to feel that way again, he wants to watch as he breaks the man and puts him back together. He wants to wreck him so bad that it feels like they were never apart or like two years would be worth the wait for something like this. He focuses on that motivation as strongly as he can and licks right over the head of Zoro's cock, right where he's the most sensitive. He gets the impression that it works to some degree when Zoro's fists and forearms slam into the locker above Sanji's head and he nearly chokes.

 

"Fuck, what did you do?" Zoro gasps and Sanji looks up at him through the curtain of his hair and takes in the sight of Zoro. His hair is a mess, the longer strands hanging in his eyes and his skin red on his cheeks and across his nose. His muscles are tight and shaking like Zoro is struggling just to stay still. Yeah, that works alright.

 

Sanji licks him again, slow and steady and focusing on making that stronger than before, thinking of how badly he wants to watch as Zoro's resolve and self control fall away. He watches as it happens, as Zoro's expression goes to tense bliss and he hisses out curses and thanks to a God that Sanji knows he doesn't even believe in.

 

He decides to stop licking Zoro so teasingly. Now that he knows that this works he figures that the more of Zoro he has available to him the stronger the sensations will be. Between his mouth and hand he goes slow, at a speed that would never usually be enough to push someone over the edge, but from the sounds that Zoro is making it probably will.

 

The thing is, he's not getting the same feedback that he would if he was drinking from Zoro and doing this with his hand. He can feel a sort of pleasurable contact buzz with from him, Sanji feels nice but it's clearly nothing in comparison to what Zoro feels. He's perfectly happy with that though, making Zoro feel good is more than good enough for him. No doubt Zoro will disagree and before too long he's sure that the ship will be 'resupplied' with lube courtesy of Zoro.

 

He wants Zoro to feel good, he wants him to feel as good as he should have been making him feel these past two years but all he can do is to make up for it now. The way that Zoro is struggling to both moan in pleasure and gasp in delight without running out of breath is telling enough that Sanji is doing a good job.

 

"Ah, Sanji, Sanji." Zoro babbles, his hand in the hair on the top of Sanji's head by his fringe, pulling at it but Sanji doesn't pay much attention to it. As averse as Zoro usually is to using just his name, far preferring the insults and less than sweet pet names, when they're doing anything sexual suddenly it becomes Sanji. At this rate he's going to end up with an accidental kink for his own name.

 

He realises at the last second that he perhaps should have listened because all of a sudden Zoro cries out and Sanji's mouth floods with the taste of Zoro. Sanji has a split second of 'oh that's what he meant' before Sanji's senses go from the simple pleased contact with Zoro's skin to wiping his brain blank, stars in his vision and every nerve in his body singing out with orgasmic glee. Sanji gasps in shock and jerks back so hard that his head hits the door to Zoro's locker.

 

"So that works as well, huh?" Zoro says breathless but still somehow smug. Sanji isn't coherent enough to do anything more than whine as his body shakes with the come down from that.

 

Zoro kneels down with him and kisses him hard, taking advantage of Sanji's shocked and pliant body. It's not fair. Even if Zoro's wasn't with anyone else when they were apart, and Sanji doubts that he was as Zoro is a man to stick to his promises even though they promised each other no such thing. Regardless, even if there was no one else, Zoro still had the company of his hand and he was still (or was for part of it), a teenager and he doubts that Zoro went two years without release. Sanji on the other hand has no choice unless he's with someone else, which he absolutely hasn't been. He wasn't prepared for it happening, he had almost forgotten what it was like.

 

He realises that he'd narrated that last bit out loud, about forgetting what it felt like, when Zoro laughs lowly and kisses him again.

 

"I think we can get you practised in it again." Zoro says in a voice that has so much promise for so many amazing things.

 

"Ah," He moans and kisses Zoro again, drunkenly uncoordinated.

 

"I love you, you're perfect, that was, holy shit. Fuuuuuck." Sanji groans incoherently against Zoro's chest, his head falling bonelessly against Zoro's collarbone.

 

"Hm, I'll remind you of that next time you complain about me snoring, or sleeping on the deck, or anything really." the swordsman teases him.

 

"Stop ruining my moment, you're awful, I hate you." Sanji grumbles, his mind coming back to him slowly but surely.

 

"That didn't take long, I thought you loved me." Zoro points out.

 

Sanji freezes, so much so that his breathing stops. Shit. He had just said that hadn't he? He'd told Zoro that he loved him. He could laugh it off and turn it into some kind of insult but more often than not Zoro knows when he's lying and... and Sanji doesn't want to lie about this. He does love Zoro. He really does.

 

In the same way that Zoro told him that he realised that he had feelings for Sanji when he died and suddenly was out of Zoro's life he realised just how deep his feelings for Zoro went when they were ripped apart for two years. He supposes that absence does make the heart grow fonder. Or perhaps it makes the heart inform the brain that it's being an idiot and should stop ignoring it. Something like that. He should... this is important, he should say this.

 

"I do." Sanji says quietly, leaning back against Zoro's locker and looking at the other man straight on.

 

"Love you, that is." He clarifies. Zoro smiles softly, his expression momentarily sweet in a way that Sanji is entirely unused to seeing on Zoro, even as close as they are.

 

"I knew that already." Zoro laughs softly and kisses him.

 

"AUGH! You bastard, that was an important moment and you ruined it!" Sanji wails and thumps his fist hard enough into Zoro's chest to make him cough in surprise. He confessed his love for Zoro and all Zoro had to say about it was that he knew? Why that dirty, rotten, good for nothing son of a-

 

"Dumbass. I love you too. I thought you knew that already." he says and runs his hand through Sanji’s hair in a way that makes Sanji’s insides melt.

 

“Don’t get all sweet on me like that all of a sudden moron, how am I supposed to react when you do that?” Sanji mutters in embarrassment as Zoro laughs loudly at Sanji’s sudden shyness.

 

Zoro loves him.

  
  
  


Sanji has to remind himself of their newly proclaimed mutual love when they’re walking around the shopping district of the island and Zoro is testing his patience. The self-centred idiot wanted just just go out and buy lube without considering anything else but Sanji had pointed out that if they were going to both risk a shopping trip in the more populated groves then they needed to make it worth it and stack up on supplies. Sanji is mostly thinking that he should get just non perishable things again, flour, rice, sugar, things like that which if stored right can last a very long time. He’d not been certain of how long it would take the crew to actually get back or how the conditions of the storeroom would hold up without the Sunny being lived in for that long, so to avoid wastage he had given everything away.

 

He’ll buy a bunch of fresh things to cook for Zoro and any of the rest of his nakama who arrived soon. Needless to say, the prospect of cooking again after two years is thrilling! He had no reason to cook for himself or for Shakky and people came to the bar to drink not to eat, added onto that was the fact that Sanji avoided being around people on the island meant that he had no reason to cook.

 

“Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to cook first when we’re all back together!” Sanji gushes gleefully, picking up item after item in his basket before checking out. Zoro seems substantially less interested, though he is at least paying attention.

 

“I have so many recipes and I don’t know which to pick first for all of you. If it’s just you I know what you like but to cook for everyone again… it’ll be great! Oh, I could make quinoa tabbouleh or cordon bleu, or maybe bake pumpernickel, so many things!” Sanji exclaims, recipes flashing behind his eyes in his excitement.

 

“Are those real things or are you just naming things that you know I won’t have heard of?” Zoro questions suspiciously, holding onto the bubble of their already purchased items.

 

“Your culinary ignorance isn’t my fault you know.” He points out primly.

 

“Although, perhaps you have more knowledge than you did two years ago. I mean, you obviously ate, so did you cook for yourself?” Sanji questions curiously.

 

“Uh, no… someone cooked for me.” Zoro answers and Sanji finds his curiosity piqued.

 

“Hey, is that on sale?” Zoro asks suddenly and Sanji turns around to see that they have extra large bags of flour at half price and Sanji’s head nearly explodes with glee at all of the things he could make with that. He hefts two onto his shoulder and starts to make his way to the checkout.

 

Sanji only realises that Zoro didn’t really answer his question when they’re halfway back to the ship. He suppose that it doesn’t matter though, even so a part of him wonders just where Zoro was for those two years. Well, if Zoro wants to tell him then Zoro will, otherwise it’s not much of his business.

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

The next week and a half passes easily with Sanji cooking food for Zoro and the pair of them making use of as many rooms in the Sunny as they can. After all before too long they’ll have to go back to sneaking around in the storeroom, the crow’s nest or Zoro’s weights room in order to have sex.

 

Sanji is returning to the ship more and more now, despite using the nights to get more training in with Shakky he finds that his days are absorbed with Zoro and preparing the ship to leave. After all, if the navigationally backwards Zoro could manage to make his way here on time (early in fact!) then the others can certainly do it too.

 

He hears outrageous bawling and sobbing coming from the ship and his first reaction is to think of Zoro, not that he's ever heard Zoro cry in that loud blubbering way that he can hear now. He sprints up the gangplank to the ship, not sparing the fish riders a backwards glance and rushes into the kitchen, forcing himself through the gross coating to do it.

 

Franky is on his knees bawling like a child, his head against Zoro's stomach and his hands tangled in the sides of Zoro's robe. The swordsman looks completely baffled and throws Sanji a 'help me' look when he sees Sanji come in.

 

"You're so bra-ah-aaaaave!" Franky sobs out.

 

"Franky! You're back!" Sanji exclaims happily.

 

Franky jolts and pulls back from Zoro, still keeping his grip on Zoro's clothes though. He stares at Sanji open mouthed and wide eyed for a few seconds before shrieking surprisingly girlishly and sprinting for Sanji and yanking him up into a bone crushing hug. No, seriously, Sanji is pretty sure that he can feel his ribs creaking.

 

"You're alive! You're alive!" Franky chokes out, his tears soaking through Sanji's tangerine shirt with smiley faces on. Damnit, Sanji likes this shirt and at this rate it's going to have tears and snot all over it!

 

"You didn't think to mention that to him?" Sanji demands, his voice coming out choked from how much Franky is crushing his lungs.

 

"Oh, that explains the crying when he saw me in here." Zoro says slowly.

 

"You're a moron!" He hisses back.

 

"Franky, Franky put me down, I'm fine, really." Sanji pleads.

 

Franky does so and Sanji twists and stretches his spine with a crunch and something that sounds like bones shifting back around. He looks up at Franky, WAY up. Franky had always been tall but now Sanji has to crane his neck to look up at him properly, the man is closer to eight foot now than seven, surely. He takes in the red balls of Franky's shoulders and the blue steel rectangular boxes that make up Sanji's forearms and the giant red metal hands on the end. Shit, what's happened to Franky since Sanji saw him last?

 

"But I saw you die, I know I did. You... you were... through your chest Sanji!" Franky stumbles over his words as fat wet tears run down his cheeks again.

 

"I know, it was some vampire thing. It sort of froze me, that's the best explanation that I can give. I'm not dead. Well, I am, but- OW!" Sanji yelps as Franky's large hand smacks him.

 

"Not funny Sanji." Franky sniffs and Sanji doesn't miss the smug and triumphant look on Zoro's face behind Franky.

 

"Sorry." Sanji apologises meekly.

 

Franky sighs and looks at him in silence, his eyes looking Sanji up and down.

 

"You're just the same... I never thought I'd see you again little bro." Franky says softly, rubbing his hand on Sanji's head with a gentleness that he wouldn't have expected from something made of such a hard material.

 

"I missed your dumb metal ass too. I'm glad that you're okay." Sanji replies genuinely.

 

Well, that's far too much emotion in one room in one go. He wants another topic now, anything but Franky blubbing and looking at him like he's not real. He feels bad enough that all of his nakama are going to think that about him, he doesn't want to spend more time than he has to witnessing that damage first hand.

 

"You changed a lot." Zoro remarks, saving Sanji from more sappy stuff for which he is silently grateful.

 

"Aw yeah, you like my upgrades?" Franky exclaims, flexing his arms and flashing his new parts.

 

“It looks pretty fucking cool Franky.” Sanji grins at him.

  
  
  


Sanji has a repeat of much the same thing when he runs into Brook. He knows that the man is coming because there are goddamn tour posters up for him, it seems like the swordsman has become quite the famous musician since Sanji saw him last.

 

Sanji had intended on seeing Brook perform personally, he wants to see his nakama for real and especially so doing what he loves. Brook is a pirate and a swordsman but he's always derived a great love from music and Sanji can't wait to see what it is that he sounds like now.

 

His plans for that are ruined though when his managers turn on him and the marines try to capture him. Sanji has to bail out before someone finds him, he knows that Brook can handle his own with getting out of a situation like that, none of the marines are high ranking or anything. Even before the last two years he would have trusted Brook to deal with something like that, but after two years he absolutely knows that he will.

 

Still he flies around in his raven form and when Brook is safe and alone he drops to the floor behind him and turns back into himself, it looks like he's heading towards the bar. Since Zoro got back he's essentially mastered switching between his forms, all he has to do is to imagine that Zoro is there and then that he needs to give him the middle finger and then as easy as that he suddenly has fingers again.

 

"You're a dead man." Sanji says lowly, catching Brook's arm and jabbing a hand into his back. The skeleton whirls around with his sword drawn but when his gaze falls on Sanji his jaw damn near hits the floor.

 

"SANJI!" He yells loudly and snags Sanji up into a hug that spins him around.

 

"Sanji, I thought you were dead!" Brook exclaims, crying loudly and getting another one of Sanji's shirts wet. Goddamnit, Sanji didn't produce the body heat to dry his clothes off, so once they were wet they stayed wet until the sun dried them. He was going to have to change his shirt after every reintroduction.

 

"I've been dead for a long time Brook, or did that go in one ear and out the other?" Sanji laughs softly. Brook looks up at him from where he has Sanji hoisted far off of the floor in a tight hug.

 

"I don't have ears." Brook says in a wavering voice before bursting out into a tearful but relieved laugh.

 

"Oh Sanji, what happened to you then? I saw you get..." Brook trails off, looking a little haunted.

 

"That thing? Nah, it takes more than that to kill me, after all someone else got there first." He grins at Brook.

 

"I should have known." Brook sniffles and wipes a tear from his cheekbone.

 

"I missed you Brook, no one else finds my skull jokes funny." he smiles happily. He really and truly has missed Brook and more than he would have expected to. It's not that he loves any of his nakama more than the other, but he misses different things about them. He misses Nami's laughter and feels sad when he sees her trees, the smell of coffee makes him miss Robin and the laughter of children makes him miss Chopper. Since Sanji died though Brook had become a large part of his new life, if you could call it that, and though Shakky got what it was like to be dead it wasn't the same as Brook.

 

"No one else finds them funny? That's a dead shame." Brook laughs.

 

"I know, right? They're such killer jokes, but they just flatline around everyone here." he chuckles and pulls Brook along towards the bar, he knows his way around the groves by heart now.

 

"But your jokes always slay me, or they would if I wasn't already dead! YOHOHOHOHO!" Brook guffaws loudly, making Sanji laugh just as hard.

 

"Hey... your teeth have changed." Brook notes, looking at him a little closer.

 

"Yeah, freaky teeth are now optional, see?" Sanji shows him, sliding them in and out as a demonstration. This has come to be his new party trick, doing it for Zoro and for Franky and now Brook too. Admittedly though with Zoro he changes what mode his teeth are in for quite different reasons than he does with anyone else, but he's not going to bring that up in polite conversation.

 

"That is very impressive. How did you learn?" the swordsman asks him curiously, swinging his cane sword around in his hand idly.

 

"I had a teacher. You remember Shakky from the bar?" Sanji asks.

 

"Yes. Oh! Is she a vampire like you? I would never have guessed!" Brook gasps, catching onto the idea far quicker than Zoro and Franky had. Brook is the first person that Sanji's told upfront, with the others he just waited for them to work it out, much to his and Shakky's amusement. Zoro's loud yell of 'you didn't tell me that she was dead too!' still makes Sanji snicker at the thought of it.

 

"She is. She's just better at hiding it than I was. I'm better now. If it wasn't for the fact that all of the bounty hunters on the island know what I am I think I'd fool more people. The civilians that I run across don't seem to realise until it's too late." Sanji reasons. He hopes that people will just think that he's a very pale human. He wants to prove to himself and to Shakky that he's convincing, it's been forever since she last pointed out that Sanji had been forgetting to blink.

 

Sanji looks up and sees that Brook is giving him a sceptical look.

 

"What? It's not like I had people offering themselves up like Zoro did and a guy's gotta eat. I never killed anyone if that's what you're thinking and none of them remember afterwards." He says sullenly.

 

"I forget sometimes that even though you're dead you still have to eat." Brook hums thoughtfully. Sanji's mouth pulls into an unhappy line at that idea. He can't starve like he could as a human, he'd gone far longer between meals as a vampire than he would ever have been comfortable doing as a human, but Shakky has told him full well what happens to a vampire deprived of food. He shudders, he doesn't want to turn into a desiccated corpse unable to move but still horrifyingly awake.

 

“Well, Zoro’s back now, so I don’t have to worry about it. Come on, let me take you to the ship, Franky’s usually hanging around there. I don’t think he wants to let it out of his sight for a while.” Sanji smiles. In all honesty the shipwright had been overjoyed to see his creation back. As much as Sunny is the nakama of all of them the ship is very much Franky’s baby. He built Sunny with his own two hands and knows every beam, plank and nail in it. He must have missed it terribly when he was away.

 

“I can’t wait to see the others.” Brook says with a happy sigh as Sanji leads him over a bridge between groves.

 

“Me too. So far it’s just the four of us, but Rayleigh came back a while ago and told us that he’d been training Luffy for the last year and a half. I can’t wait to see how strong he is. Anyway, the old guy said that Luffy would be back soon.” Sanji explains happily.

 

Rayleigh had actually returned before even Zoro did. He just strolled into the bar one day like he owned the place, and fair enough he sort of did. He sat down at the bar and had a drink, cool as you please. When Sanji asked him where he’d been, because Shakky hadn’t asked at all, he’d said that he’d been training Luffy. He’d given this secretive smile and said that their captain was leagues stronger than he had been before, as well as reassuring Sanji that Luffy knew the precise amount of dead that Sanji was. Specifically the walking around and talking kind. To his pleasure Rayleigh had also said that Luffy already knew. With that news a huge weight had lifted from Sanji’s shoulders then, one that he hadn’t even noticed that he’d been carrying. No matter how much agony Luffy had been through with Ace, Sanji hadn’t made it worse by letting Luffy think that he’d died in that fight and that he had realised in time as Sanji had thought.

 

“You know that you’re going to get quite a reaction from the rest when they get back you know.” Brook says slowly.

 

“I’m trying not to think about it.” Sanji mutters unhappily.

 

“They’ll all be happy to see you alive though. In a manner of speaking of course.” the skeleton points out. Sanji gives him the flattest laugh that he can manage.

 

“They all thought they’d lost me. Again.” He says miserably and kicks a rock for good measure. If he’s going to sulk then he may as well go all out with the gesture. The rock sticks to the ground though and comes off with a sticky ‘schlup’ sound and doesn’t really fly all that far, mostly ruining the gesture.

 

“We all thought that we lost you two years ago. What’s changed now? If my crew had not really been-” Brook starts and a flare of guilt and anger burns so hot in Sanji’s stomach that he’s half surprised that it doesn’t burn through the space between his ribs and out through his skin with blinding red sparks like a literal flare.

 

“I KNOW! I- I know. I know that what you went through was worse than this and I shouldn’t complain but-” Sanji starts shouting but his voice tapers off into something small and the anger inside him is drenched under a wave of shame.

 

Brook’s bony fingers wrap around Sanji’s arms and before he knows it he’s hauled close, his face pressed into a blue silk cravat.

 

“It’s not a competition Sanji, I didn’t mean that. But I’m happy that you’re still here, overjoyed in fact. The others will be too. You know that, don’t you?” Brook says sincerely and somehow Sanji’s hands become tangled in Brook’s black jacket.

 

“But when they see me they’ll remember it all over again, I had to watch them all react to me die, or what they thought was me dying. At least the first time I didn’t have to watch but-” Sanji says with a shake of his head.

 

“And they’ll be pleased to be wrong again.” the other man says quietly.

 

“But what if one day they aren’t? What if someday something does kill me for real, no waking up, no nothing. They’re going to sit there waiting for me to come back and I won’t and how will they be able to accept that or let me go if that happens? I can’t fix that.” Sanji says whisper quiet. The thought had been lurking in the back of his mind like a snake and no matter how much he’d been trying to avoid it the thing had still been there.

 

“So don’t let it happen.” is all Brook had to say.

 

“I didn’t intend to die the first time, I didn’t let it happen to me when I got stuck to that tree and frozen like that. Intentions don’t mean shit. I’m stronger than I was and I’m on my third chance, two more than most people get, but I can’t promise it won’t happen for real. How much more will-” Sanji says, his voice fast and the whole thing feels like throwing up. It’s like getting something toxic out of him and maybe he’ll feel better afterwards but right now it’s just terrible.

 

“That’s how it is for everyone. You just try your hardest to make today not the day that you put your nakama through that. Some day my bones might turn to dust, some attack might do that to me. You just have to try, if you think about death too much you won’t be living.” Brook says, his hand rubbing down Sanji’s back like he’s a cat. Sanji pulls back and looks up at Brook, ignoring the fact that his eyes are wet. He blinks through it and looks at the man who is much much older than him, who has already been dead for so long and lost so many. What can he say to that?

 

“Even though I’m already dead?” Sanji asks with the smallest of hopeful smiles.

 

“Hoho, even though you’re already dead.” Brook agrees with a startled little laugh.

 

“That wasn’t that great of a skull joke, I’ll try and think of a better one on the way to the ship.” Sanji laughs weakly and turns away from Brook to head in the direction of the Sunny.

 

“That’s true, it was quite minimal. The bare bones of a joke if you will.” Brooks says with a mischievous look about him.

 

The two of them manage to last about five seconds before bursting out into loud and obnoxious laughter. Sometimes when Sanji talks to Brook about this kind of thing he swears that he’s going to get whiplash. It feels like he can’t talk to anyone else about his dead problems, no one can really get it unless they’re dead too. They could empathise sure, but it’s not the same. Shakky wouldn’t understand, she’s happy with what she is, either that or she came to terms with it a long time ago, so he can’t talk to her. But with Brook he can go from crushing existential desperation to side splitting laughter in about one minute flat.

 

When they get to the Sunny Sanji barely gets up the gangplank with Brook before Zoro appears. He spares a brief but pleasant ‘good to see you again Brook’ before storming up to Sanji with murder on his face.

 

“I oughta stab you.” Zoro growls at him.

 

“What did I do?” Sanji asks innocently, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Not that he’d put it there because it’d make him sick but the saying still works.

 

“You told me that Brook would be here today.” Zoro retorts angrily.

 

“Uh, I am here today though.” Brook says uncertainly, looking between Zoro and Sanji.

 

“Yeah, but Sanji told me that he knew that because he had developed psychic future powers from being a vampire!” Zoro snaps, his hand going for his sword in what Sanji knows is an entirely empty threat.

 

“You have no proof that I don’t.” Sanji points out smugly and crosses his arms.

 

“Do you?! That’s so exciting!” Brook exclaims, clapping his hands together in a click of bones.

 

“Yeah, I told him about the Soul King posters all around the place that he somehow hadn’t seen.” Franky admits, scratching the back of his head with a tiny hand that comes out of his big hand. Sanji’s shoulders fall in defeat.

 

“Aw Franky, do you know how long I could have kept him believing that?” Sanji whines petulantly. He’d hoped at least to keep that going until Usopp showed up, he would have got a kick out of that.

 

Zoro’s scowl only gets darker as Franky and Brook laugh uproariously, which ends up being a vicious cycle as they laugh harder the angrier he looks and he looks angrier the harder they laugh.   

 

“Tell me, what happens if I cut off a limb, a leg maybe?” Zoro finally growls and pulls Wado out, glowering at Sanji as he does it.

 

“Well, Shakky says that if I get a limb chopped off but still have it it’ll heal if I just stick it back on and wait, but I’m never entirely sure if she’s just fucking with me.” Sanji says thoughtfully.

 

“I WONDER how that feels.” Zoro grouses, his blade twitching.

 

“Aw, Zoro, you can’t stay mad at me.” Sanji sighs, walking over to Zoro with just the slightest amount of shimmy in his hips. Zoro narrows his remaining eye skeptically at him.

 

“Is this your psychic powers again huh?” the swordsman asks darkly. Sanji winds his arms over Zoro’s shoulders and behind his head.

 

“Nah, I know that because people who are mad at me don’t get laid.” Sanji responds with an obscene eyebrow wiggle.

 

“I ought to stab you.” Zoro repeats with a glare at Sanji.

 

Sanji pauses for effect and then slowly raises one eyebrow and treats Zoro to his most lecherous grin. Zoro’s eye widens alarmingly and the swordsman shoves him away.

 

“Pervert!” Zoro accuses him hotly, making Franky hoot with laughter. Sanji snaps his teeth at Zoro, and though they’re his human looking teeth they still make Zoro go a shade of red that clashes wonderfully with his hair.

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

“Tomorrow morning it is then.” Nami nods at the crew as they’re sat around the table in Shakky’s Rip Off Bar. Sanji’s eyes idly drift down to the bikini top that she’s wearing, when she’d returned and seen that he was okay she’d all but jammed his face between those heavenly breasts and nearly snapped his head off with the force of her hug.

 

Robin had done something similar, only that face full of hugs and cleavage had also come with a slightly tearful threat that if Sanji pulled that sort of thing again she’d make him wish that he was dead. Sanji had the piece of mind to not joke that he was already dead. Brook did not and Robin jammed Brook’s cravat inside his mouth with some force.

 

Chopper and Usopp had, predictably, nearly drowned him in tears and Sanji cried at seeing Usopp as well, both because Usopp was his nakama but also because the sharpshooter who was supposed to be younger than him was now the same height as him and almost as muscular as Zoro was two years ago. At this rate all of the rest of the crew was only going to get taller and stronger looking and more badass and Sanji will be left looking like a skinny teenager forever! At least Brook was a nine foot tall skeleton, that would intimidate most people. Sanji knows that he’s strong and deadly but is it too vain to at least want to look the part too?

 

“Shakky, can I turn into lightning? Or at least summon lightning when I appear somewhere?” Sanji asks, tilting his head backwards over the backrest of the booth to look at her upside down.

 

“Why would you possibly want to do that?” Shakky asks him with a skeptically raised eyebrow.

 

“Why the hell wouldn’t I want to? That’d be fucking amazing!” Sanji yells waving his arms at her in his enthusiasm.

 

“You’re having far too much fun with the idea of your powers.” She says in a tone that Sanji knows is exasperated fondness.

 

“You’re having far too little, don’t be so boring with yours.” Sanji retorts quickly. He’s startled though by a loud laugh from Usopp. He straightens up and stops looking at Shakky upside down and returns his gaze to the table where Usopp is shaking with laughter and Nami and Robin are looking at him with open amusement.

 

“...What?” Sanji asks Usopp suspiciously.

 

“I never thought I’d live to see you being rude to a woman!” Usopp blurts out with a laugh and to his horror Sanji sees that he isn’t the only one laughing. Franky is sniggering but more upsettingly Robin is smiling with that bright twinkle of amusement in her eyes that is the equivalent of Franky’s laughing so hard that he cries laugh. Nami is grinning wide like a cat who’s just found a lifetime supply of cream and Zoro is radiating smug glee so much that Sanji thinks he might need sunglasses to cope with it.

 

“No- I wasn’t- Shakky, help!” Sanji pleads looking at her desperately.

 

“Sanji, you’ve wounded me. I think that I might cry.” the older vampire says with a devious smile. Sanji bites down on his kneejerk apologies and glares at her.

 

“No I haven’t, quit making me look bad.” He mutters at her angrily, sinking low into his seat.

 

“You’ve got to tell me how you made him stop that.” Nami says with a slow smile that Sanji is used to seeing right before some poor person is about to lose a lot of money. Not that she doesn’t deserve anything that she wants of course, Nami deserves everything.

 

“Mostly threats and mockery.” Shakky answers lightly.

 

“I knew I was on the right tra-HEY!” Zoro jolts as if he’s been kicked under the table, not that Sanji had anything to do with that. Not at all. No, never.

 

“As fun as this is, and believe me it is, is there anything else we need before we leave tomorrow?” Nami asks, her expression returning back to the serious and in control Nami that they all rely upon.

 

“I’ve got everything that I need for the ship and Rayleigh has explained the coating to me. I think that we’re good on that front.” Franky answers, trying to get his expression under control.

 

“We have all of the food that we need.” Sanji answers, keen for the topic to move on.

 

“All of the medical supplies have been refreshed, though I would like to replenish the ship’s supply of emergency blood, so if I could get you all to donate some tonight that would be great. But ah, Sanji I don’t know if you can go without feeding for that long, I wouldn’t want Zoro to donate to you too soon after donating blood for my reserves.” Chopper says with a pause and looks at Sanji curiously.

 

“Don’t worry Chopper, I’m fine on that front for a while.” Sanji answers. In truth he was fed enough before Zoro got back and he and Zoro have had more than enough time to get reaquainted for Sanji to be in no need of feeding any time soon.

 

“Yeah, and I think we’ve found an alternative to-STOP KICKING ME!” Zoro yells, kicking Sanji back. Sanji hisses at him in warning and jabs the toe of his shoe into the meat of Zoro’s thigh. If he dares to tell the others that blood isn’t the only thing that seems to ping Sanji’s system he will make Zoro prove just how much better he’s got at fighting, who cares if that brawl levels an entire grove in the process?

 

“Boys, stop fighting.” Shakky says in her best disapproving adult voice. Sanji swears that Zeff could take lessons from her.

 

“Trust me Shakky, that’s a lost cause.” Nami sighs, her face in her hands.

 

“Oh really?” Shakky asks lightly and then leans down to Sanji, her face inches from his.

 

“Sanji, if you two don’t stop fighting and endangering the furniture in my bar again I’ll give you another demonstration of how to turn into a familiar form for escape.” She says as sweet as honey. Sanji snatches his legs up from the table so fast that his knees hit him in the chin and he wraps his arms around them in terror.

 

“I’ll stop, anything but that.” Sanji agrees in quiet bone chilling terror.

 

“This I have to see.” Zoro says darkly, making Sanji stare at him in horror.

 

“Don’t.” Sanji breathes. Zoro wouldn’t, would he?

 

Zoro’s grin goes sickeningly evil and the table suddenly jolts with the force of his kick. Sanji’s gaze snaps to Shakky and her whole body seems to shiver for a moment, she’s doing it.

 

“NAMI GRAB MY HAND!” Sanji yells at the top of his lungs. Wide eyed Nami tries but she’s too far away to reach. Sanji leaps up out of his seat, grabs her hand and kicks off into the air with her against his side just as Shakky explodes into a swarm of spiders.

 

Sanji clutches Nami close and he swears that his eardrum bursts as she screams so close to him. Sanji holds on tight in terror as spiders surge up the walls and along the ceiling beams. Sanji touches nothing and after a few seconds the spiders fall from their high perch and the swarm on the floor and tables and a few of his shell shocked nakama recede and merge into a humanoid shape that becomes Shakky.

 

“How are you doing that?” Shakky asks looking up at him.

 

Sanji realises that in his effort to get away from the spiders on every surface that he’s… not actually touching anything, just kicking off of the air itself and some how holding himself and Nami in midair.

 

“Come down, show me how you’re doing that.” Shakky says.

 

“No way, you probably still have spiders somewhere. I’m not touching anything.” Sanji replies, his skin still itching with phantom spiders and he has to believe that they’re imaginary and that they’re not crawling up his back.

 

“I don’t have spiders anywhere, I’m fully formed, see?” Shakky says, turning around to demonstrate. Sanji looks at her suspiciously. She’s probably missing a toe in one of those boots or something, that’d be enough for a spider or two.

 

“That’s exactly what someone who still had spiders around here would say.” Sanji points out, still not willing to touch the floor. He may never touch the floor again. He can do that forever, right?

 

Shakky rolls her eyes at him and crouches, suddenly she’s right in front of him, her arms are around his shoulders and then he’s slamming into the floor, just able to turn his body in time to stop Nami hitting the floor too. He scrambles to his feet, Nami still clinging to his side with her legs wrapped around his waist.

 

“Maybe I should turn into spiders more, every time I do it you learn something. The first time that you turned into a raven was when I did that and now you can apparently fly, or something like it.” She says in a self satisfied tone of voice.

 

“I’d rather never have new powers again if it meant you wouldn’t do that anymore.” Sanji whimpers, his arm tightening around Nami.

 

“Now who’s boring?” Shakky purrs, leaning in to Sanji’s space and making him flinch.

 

“I will never be clean again.” Franky whispers in a horrified little voice.

 

“Well, I’m going to go back to the ship and shower, maybe scrub all of the skin off of my body too.” Sanji says flatly.

 

“Not before me.” Nami threatens.

 

“Please Nami.” Sanji begs, he really needs to get the itching feeling of spiders OFF of his skin, he doesn’t care if they probably never touched him.

 

“Since… since you saved me from that, this might be the only occasion where I’ll agree to share with you.” Nami nods slowly, her eyes still wide in fear. It speaks a lot about Sanji’s horror that he’s excited more for the prospect of not having to wait for his shower than he is with sharing it with his goddess.

 

“Hey, no you’re not!” Zoro barks out, a scowl on his face.

 

“Oh, don’t you look at me like that. This is your fault, you’re never getting laid again!” Sanji hisses furiously at Zoro as Nami finally climbs down off of Sanji’s waist, eyeing the ground uncertainly.

 

“I don’t buy that.” Zoro says skeptically as the rest of his nakama slide out of the booth with varying levels of trauma on their faces. Even Usopp, the freak who likes bugs, looks a little horrified at what he just experienced.  Sanji stares Zoro down and some part of him knows that he’ll crack sooner or later and bone Zoro again, he perhaps should put it like that around Brook sometimes, that’s an excellent skull joke.

 

“Fine. You’re not getting laid for a VERY LONG time.” Sanji amends, walking to the door with his hand on Nami’s back.

 

“That… seems fair.” Zoro concedes, scratching his arm absently and looking at Shakky a little warily.

  
Unsteadily they all make their way back to the ship with several of the crew throwing themselves in the water to be sure no spiders got on them, which leads to Zoro and Usopp having to perform a few rescues for their fruit users but Sanji neither cares nor participates. A little bit of Sanji dies inside when he shares a bath with Nami and the two of them are focused on nothing more than scrubbing the non existent spiders away.


	20. Chapter 20

“Admit it,” He prompts her, “You’re going to miss me.”

 

“Miss the noise and fighting? You think so?” Shakky smiles at him.

 

“I’ll be gone tomorrow and I think you will miss me. Or at least having someone to boss around.” He says teasingly.

 

“I might miss having someone who’ll still help me clear up the bar after being traumatised by me turning into spiders the same day.” Shakky grins at him and Sanji flinches.

 

“Don’t say the ‘S’ word.” Sanji snaps in horror and squeezes his eyes shut, “I just wanted to repay you for all that you did for me the last two years. Even if you are awful.”

 

Shakky laughs at him again and starts to wax down the bar, shaking her head at the fact that apparently Sanji is just as much of a sucker as he always has been for her. She may have broken down his barriers enough that he’ll argue and snap at a woman, but he’s still weak to her charms.

 

“You mean spiders?” She taunts and Sanji flinches and stares at her to make sure that she’s not about to do that to him again.

 

“And I’m the one who teases you?” Sanji mutters under his breath in embarrassment.

 

“Heard that.” Shakky calls without looking up. Sanji decides it’s best not to argue and instead resolves to be helpful and starts to put the chairs in the bar upside down on the tables so that he can clean the floor more easily.

 

Sanji tugs the bucket and mop out of the cupboard, now that all the chairs are on the tables he can clean the floor. He adds the cleaner and water from the sink, he and Shakky mostly working in silence as she buffs the bar with the polish needed to stop it staining with the drinks that get spilt on it all of the time. It’s hard to believe that by ten AM tomorrow his crew will be on their way to Fishman Island, they’ll finally be moving forward again. In the meantime though the least that he can do is to help Shakky close up shop one last time.

 

“Remember one of the first questions that you asked me two years ago?” Shakky says after a while. Sanji pauses and frowns, trying to remember.

 

“About how you’re able to creep me out? Because I think that’s justified, even without the age thing.” Sanji says darkly.

 

“Don’t be an ass or I won’t give it to you.” Shakky says and glares at him.

 

“Okay, I’ll bite, what?” Sanji asks, turning around to face her fully.

 

“About a cure, you asked me if there was one.” She says matter of factly.

 

Sanji stares at her in wide eyed shock for a few long moments.

 

“You’re serious?” He asks her, completely stunned. She had never given any indication over the last two years that she was looking into it at all like she’d said once. He’d figured that she’d just been saying that to shut him up the first few times. She’d always slapped down any conversation about Sanji wishing that he was human again, she said that she had no time for self pity and what-if’s. So was that all a front in case she didn’t find a cure?

 

“Absolutely.” She nods.

 

“That’s amazing.” Sanji breathes in wide eyed wonder.

 

“But before I give it to you, you need to tell me why you want it, and don’t give me any bullshit explanations this time.” She says sharply and Sanji’s brain scatters for something that she’ll consider good.

 

“I doubt it’s because you’re worried about being normal. I doubt you were ever normal in your whole life and the normal humans on this island are so removed from anyone that you respect at any real level that you wouldn’t want to be like them. Pirates aren’t normal. If it’s about looking human you already know how to do that enough to fool most people, so why do you want to know? What is it you hope for?” She presses, staring him down and her bigger, badder, older-than-you air oppressing Sanji but he knows enough by now to fight it back not not let himself be intimidated.

 

“Because my nakama have been gone for two years and they’re older than they were and they’re just going to keep-” Sanji cuts himself off, squeezing his eyes shut and taking in a juddering breath as the thought chills him. Since he saw that horrible day two years ago they’ve all got older, they’ve got stronger too but there will be a time when...

 

“You think that they’ll all get old and die.” his mentor says into the silent bar and Sanji snaps his eyes open to glare at her. He was thinking it but it still hurts him to hear her say it, much less to her her cut him off to say it for him.

 

“Well?” Sanji prompts. Isn’t that a good enough reason for him to want to know if there’s a cure? She wanted to know and now she does so she should just give him the answer.

 

“If you’re lucky they’ll all get old and die.” Shakky says and Sanji actually hisses this time.

 

“You call that LUCK?!” He snaps at her, his real teeth coming out to play as if they would do any good against her.

 

“I do, if you’re unlucky they die without even getting old.” She says with venom in her tone, standing up and getting closer to him. Sanji flinches back like she’s slapped him but he doesn’t look away.

 

“How many old pirates do you know Sanji? People who are still pirates and not ex pirates, not those who gave it up young and did something sane with their lives. Not the kind of normal that regular people do, but like your old man, not a pirate but not a normal man either but certainly old. The only two old pirates that I personally knew were Whitebeard and Rayleigh and you know what happened to Whitebeard.” She says harshly.

 

“You all chose to be pirates. If you are lucky you get to watch them get old and die, that is luck Sanji and make no mistake.” Shakky says darkly.

 

Sanji’s teeth snap back into place and he ducks his head, squeezing on the handle of the mop hard enough to make the wood creak.

 

“I know that, but… I’d always thought I’d be doing that with them, not be there on the outside.” He admits quietly.

 

Shakky watches him for a moment or two before turning on her heel and crouching down behind the bar and rummaging around with the sounds of clinking glass. After a few moments she stands up again and places a small blue bottle on the counter. It’s angularly designed, looking more like a perfume bottle than a liquor bottle but Sanji supposes that it must be based on where she got it from.

 

“Here’s the cure.” She says simply, tapping on the lid.

 

“REALLY?!” Sanji exclaims in awe. He’d expected maybe a recipe or some far fetched quest to go to some island and get it, not for her to have it stashed behind the whiskey in the bar. How long had it been there without Sanji knowing, and why would she keep it stored like that? Just so that he wouldn’t think anything of it? He supposes a bottle in a bar isn’t too suspicious, but it’s so small and what if he’d sold it by mistake? It’s awfully… odd. Shakky’s one for mind games but still.

 

“Sure.” She says throwing it to him. Sanji drops the mop and scrambles to catch it. He holds the cool bottle in his palm with awe.

 

“I’ve never taken it though, so it’ll do one of two things if you do.” Shakky says easily and Sanji looks up at her with rapt attention.

 

“Either it’ll cure you and you’ll go back to being the human that you were before you got bitten.” She says.

 

“Great!” Sanji gasps and touches the lid, turning the cap as Shakky talks again.

 

“Of course, that means that you’ll undo all of the progress that you made here. You’ll be weak in comparison to them if they’ve been training as hard as you. They’ll have to look out for you the whole time for the rest of your journey, two years worth of training isn’t something you can catch up on by yourself, they’ll keep improving and leave you behind as the weakest.” Shakky continues, stilling Sanji’s hand with her words.

 

“You’ll be too weak to protect them, hell they’ll be throwing themselves in danger trying to protect you. You’ll probably die and you already saw how much that hurts them, you did it twice after all. Or perhaps one of them will die saving your life because you were too weak to.” She says inspecting her nails.

 

Sanji’s hand halts.

 

He swore on everything that he held dear that he would never go through that again, he would never see his nakama hurt and ripped apart and that he would do anything he had to in order to keep them safe, to protect their lives and their dreams. He’s seen with his own eyes how much they’ve all changed, how much stronger and physically fitter they all look, hell Usopp barely looks like the same guy that Sanji knew two years ago. Every single one of them is stronger, but if he goes back to what he was he’ll be making himself weaker. He’ll be breaking the promise that he made to himself to protect them. Can he do that?

 

“What’s the other thing? You said that there were two things that might happen.” He asks numbly, looking up at Shakky who is watching him with those piercing black eyes of hers.

 

“You’re undead. It’d cure that and put you back to how you were before you became undead.” She says and Sanji grips the bottle tightly in his hand.

 

“You mean dead-dead, the permanent kind that humans have.” he says flatly, knowing just what she means.

 

“Yes. So keep that cure. Do what you want to with it, decide who and what you want to be. You’re the only one who can.” She says in an unreadable voice. Sanji looks at her and her expression is perfectly neutral, intense, but expressionless. Sanji thinks that he maybe sees judgement or disappointment in there, but her features betray none of those, if he sees them there then it’s most likely him imposing his own feelings onto her face.

 

He looks down at the bottle in his hand again, the cool glass in his hand and the blue edges reflecting in the few lights in the bar that are still on. Inside the dark amber liquid, though blue hued from the glass, laps back and forth when he tilts the bottle. Shakky could of course just be screwing with him, it wouldn’t be the first time. It could just be a sample of fancy bourbon in a pretty sample bottle that’d do no more than make him sick and earn Shakky’s eternal disappointment at his selfishness, but on the other hand it could be REAL.

 

There’s a chance that he could be human again, he could be normal and things could be like they were. He could eat his own cooking again and feel it in his stomach, he could sleep and even dream, he could have sex with Zoro without those irritating toys or the lingering sense of inadequacy. He could be alive. He wants it so badly. No matter how cool or useful his vampire powers are, no matter how fun it is to scare the shit out of hunters by screaming dramatically and bursting into smoke… he still wants to be human again. He wants to go back to how things used to be. Sure he likes some things about being a vampire, a lot of things in fact, but he’d be a damn liar if he said that he didn’t want to be human again.

 

He has a duty to his nakama though and he’s never seen it as a burden. They are as much a part of him now as his limbs are and losing any one of them would be just as devastating. Shakky is right, he was always going to lose them, human or not. Even so, he will do everything in his power to keep them alive, to support them into their dreams and see his own too. He’d already been prepared to give his life for them, and though he’s dead he’d still do it now.

 

If he has to watch them all die he’ll make sure they’re as old and happy as possible. He wants to see Usopp with eight thousand followers and every lie a truth now and for him to be the legend that people talk about in tones that suggest that a man like that can’t be real. He wants everyone who picks up a sword and calls themselves as swordsman to know Zoro’s name as the greatest, undefeated and untouchable. He wants to find All Blue and see it on Nami’s map of the whole world, something that everyone will look at and use and wonder how the hell anyone lived without it. He wants Robin’s knowledge to be in history books and Chopper’s work to be the most famous name in medicine. He wants Luffy to be known the world over as the Pirate King and for everyone to know that the ship he sailed to that tile on was the Thousand Sunny and it was built by the master of masters Franky. He wants them to sail around the world right back to where they started, he wants Brook to see Laboon again… he doesn’t want to… he doesn’t want to put Brook through watching his nakama die around him again.

 

If he takes this potion, this cure, if it works and doesn’t kill him then maybe he can see those dreams come true. Maybe he won’t be so weak as to get hurt to get his nakama hurt. Maybe he gets to grow old with them and die an old man, just as skilled, grumpy and crotchety as Zeff is. Maybe he can do all of that. But if he does he’ll have to look Brook in his empty eye sockets and know that because of him Brook will have to be the last man standing on a crew all over again.

 

He would kill anyone for putting his nakama through their worst memories again. If someone tried to hold Nami’s town to ransom again, if someone threatened to use Buster Call again, if someone threatened to rip the crew apart again in front of Luffy’s eyes… if any person tried that he’d kill them. But if he takes this he’ll be doing just that to Brook.

 

But to be human again… a gift like that…

 

Sanji holds the bottle up and stares at it in the dim light of the bar. It glints in the light and Sanji feels like he’s being pulled apart. If he’d never been given this then he would have been fine. Sure things would have hurt, he’d still feel that wish to be human but now that he has it he has to choose and he knows that whichever choice he makes he’ll have moments or maybe even longer than that where he’ll bitterly regret it. Why did she have to give him a choice?

 

“Go back to your ship. Think about it.” Shakky says to him firmly.

 

Sanji stares at the bottle, barely hearing her. His hand is shaking.

 

“I’ll finish clearing up. Go.” She says firmly and shoves him towards the direction of the door.

 

Numbly Sanji stumbles back to the ship and up on deck. He can hear most of his nakama snoring downstairs in the bunkroom, including Brook, the way his snores rattle in his skull is quite distinctive. He heads up into the crow’s nest and watches the low light play off of the bottle.

 

He goes back and forth on his decision all night. He could hold onto the bottle for years and make his choice, but putting it off won’t do anything. If anything it’ll merely widen the gap between him and his nakama in skill the later that he takes it, assuming that it works and assuming that it really is a cure and Shakky isn’t screwing with him. If he takes it after they all die, hopefully of old age with legends surrounding their names, then he’d absolutely be abandoning Brook. But if he takes it right now and trains his ass off every single day without slacking at all then maybe he can catch up, assuming that it doesn’t kill him for real. If he did die he’d put his nakama through hell again and they would wait around for him to wake up, which he never would.

 

Or he doesn’t take it at all, he stares death in the face and watches his nakama die one by one. He stays with Brook, assuming that he’s able to do that and look at the man without thinking of the fact that he’s the only one left. But if his heart breaks that badly will he still be himself after all of that?

 

Shit, maybe he should just bite everyone and they can be an undead crew. But before he’s even finished that thought he knows that he can’t do it. Luffy’s blood nearly burnt his tongue right out of his head, so they’d still be losing Luffy, Robin and Chopper. He’d just be putting other people in his position and he can’t do that. Besides, who would they eat if they were all vampires or inedible because of being fruit users?

 

He is screwed whatever he does.

 

When the sun rises he finally puts the bottle into his jacket and heads down into the kitchen, trying to distract himself from his problem. He cooks and he cooks, probably making too much food, but it’s the only thing that he can do that halfway takes his mind off of it. Needless to say when Luffy comes storming in with the others close on his heels it proves to be less of a problem than he’d anticipated, even if he does basically have to roll Luffy out of the room afterwards.

 

They’ve not got long before they leave and Sanji is still staring at his bottle, the blue glass seeming to mock him with it’s mystery liquid. To take it or not to take it.

 

“Sanji!” Nami shouts irritably, her fingers snapping before his eyes, obscuring the bottle. Sanji looks up in confusion and sees her and a few of the rest of his nakama staring at him. Had he been talking out loud or something?

 

“Huh?” He says dumbly and Sanji sees Zoro smack his hands into his face and groan.

 

Nami pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs in a way that sounds almost pained.

 

“I said that I spent the last two years studying weather and navigation, fighting and upgrading my weapon too, but mainly weather and navigation. I was on a floating island that specialised in it.” She explains.

 

“That’s great.” Sanji smiles, pleased for her.

 

“Stop talking, idiot.” She barks at him and Sanji nods, ashamed for ignoring her the first time.

 

“I also said that I was in my room last night re-reading this.” Nami says, holding up the book with the hole blown in it. The book with the chapter on All Blue.

 

“Now, it’s not a sure thing. I’d need Franky to help me set up free floating monitoring points that we could get data back from, and it would rely on this book being right and a lot of luck but… I think I can get you there. I think I can find All Blue.” She says slowly.

 

Sanji damn near drops the bottle.

 

He moves, faster than the eye can see, snatching Nami up from the floor and spinning her around in a whirl.

 

“Do you really mean it?!” He gasps in wide eyed excitement, practically jumping in glee.

 

“I wouldn’t joke about this, you moron.” Nami says, smiling nonetheless as she raps him on the forehead with the book.

 

Sanji’s mind reels, this could be it, he could find it and prove everyone wrong, everyone who ever told him he was a fool to dream. He could find some way to tell Zeff, to tell his old man that he did it, he did it for them and that All Blue is out there. He can swim in his sea and see every fish, cook every dish and feed his nakama until they can’t possibly eat any more. It’s real.

 

“You’ll be the first one to do it Sanji.” Luffy pipes up, his grin so broad that Sanji thinks it might split his head clean off. The first one to achieve his dream…

 

“If you weren’t so distracted with whatever that is then you would have heard me the first time, it was way more dramatic then.” Nami pouts, looking down at him from where he still has her help up against him from his gleeful dance.

 

Sanji puts her down carefully and looks at the blue bottle. He missed her telling him about his dream because of this thing.

 

“Tch, he’s doing it again. Come on Franky, lift the anchor, we’ve got an island to get to!” Nami calls. Franky grins and snaps a smart salute at her that actually seems half genuine.

 

“Wait, I have something to do, I’ll be right back.” Sanji says suddenly.

 

“Aw, what?” Luffy pouts.

 

“I’ll only be a moment!” Sanji calls over his shoulder, leaping over the railings and sprinting across the grove.

 

He bursts through the door of the bar the stares at Shakky for a long moment.

 

“Keep it. I don’t want it.” He says breathlessly and throws the bottle towards her, she catches it out of the air and smiles at him, broadly. Maybe this was another one of her bullshit tests, maybe it’s just alcohol in there or maybe it is what she says it is but he missed Nami talking about All Blue and he won’t miss anything else because of it. He’s running out of time and like hell is he going to waste any more.

 

“I’ll see you. Here, in a hundred years. I’ll tell you everything that happened.” He says firmly.

 

“I’ll see you then. I’m sure I’ll need a new business partner by then.” Shakky says after a few seconds. Sanji nods, by then Rayleigh will be long dead. Who knows if all of Sanji’s crew will be. If this life extending thing is really strong Zoro might still be around, maybe he’ll be too lost to find the afterlife. Maybe Franky will replace enough of himself that he’ll keep going forever. Maybe it’ll just be him and Brook but it doesn’t matter.

 

“Only if you start serving food. I’m a cook, not a bartender.” Sanji laughs.

 

“If you keep staying in here I’ll charge you rent. Don’t you have nakama to get back to?” She says pointedly.

 

“Yeah,” Sanji nods, “I do.”

 

He turns tail and runs back to the ship as fast as he can and when he lands on the deck Nami just shakes her head at him in exasperation and motions to Franky with her hand. The anchors come up out of the water and the ship slowly starts to move.

 

He heads to the railing on the other side of the ship, looking out at the sea that they’ll soon be sailing under. He hears Brook walking up to him, the sound of bone on bone and smart shoes on adam wood.

 

“What was that all about?” Brook asks quietly, joining him at the railing.

 

“Nothing really, just getting a life.” Sanji grins up at him.

 

“Even though you’re already dead?” Brook replies and the two of them instantly burst into laughter.

 

“Oh I am going to DISMEMBER you both!” Zoro shouts furiously. Sanji turns around and sees Zoro with his swords drawn and the most menacing aura around him, it’d almost put Shakky to shame.

 

Sanji smiles broad and fang filled.

 

“Zoro, don’t say things like that. You’ll give poor Brook a heart attack.” Sanji says sweetly and Zoro swings around to Brook, his glare hot enough to melt lead.

 

“Don’t… don’t do it.” Zoro warns.

 

“But I don’t have a heart! YOHOHOHHOOO SANJI HELP!” Brook yells, ducking under Zoro’s too fast sword.

 

“Hey, fight me, you dumb marimo.” Sanji goads Zoro, kicking him in the back. Zoro turns around and brandishes his swords, clearly all for that idea.

 

“You idiots are MISSING IT!” Nami yells down at them.

 

“I already saw it once.” Zoro shoots back.

 

“That’s because you got on the WRONG SHIP earlier!” Sanji yells at him, along with several of the others.

 

Sanji pauses, his foot on two of Zoro’s blades. He looks out at the sea as it rises up above the mast of the ship as they sail lower and lower. Within a second the highest point of the ship is underwater.

 

This… this is worth seeing.


End file.
